OREANDA-NEWS. December 02, 2014. Deputy Head of FAS, Andrey Kashevarov, took part in the panel on “Financial and Monetary Policy in Russia under New Challenges”.

The discussion was held jointly with the International Economists Union and the Liberal Economic Society of Russia. It was organized by the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation at the “Russian Economic Policy in the Context of Global Turbulence” International Financial-and-Economic Forum.

Deputy Head of FAS focused his presentation on the importance of creating conditions for fair competition on the market of banking services, particularly, by excluding unreasonable advantages for some market participants established by certain normative legal acts.

Andrey Kashevarov informed the discussion participants about the robust efforts of the antimonopoly authority in this area in the recent years and highlighted positive results. The later are primarily related to the Constitutional Court supporting the FAS position that it is necessary to ensure the rights of military pensioners for receiving pensions and other payments not only at the “Savings Bank of Russia” OJSC but at any other bank of their choice without any additional commissions as well as other categories of pensioners that are entitled to labour pensions.

Andrey Kashevarov also said that adopting the Federal Law “On Introducing Changes to Some Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation in the Part of Excluding the Provisions Establishing Advantages for Particular Economic Entities” in 2014, drafted by FAS, enabled excluding unreasonable competitive advantages for attracting money of socially unprotected categories of citizens as deposits in three banks, no less than half of shares (stock) of which are owned by the Russian Federation.

Andrey Kashevarov concluded that “as a result of the efforts of the antimonopoly authority over 850 banks were able to compete for depositing the monetary resources, obtained by military retirees as pensions and other payments, as well as depositing funds of socially unprotected groups of the population at credit organization”.

He pointed out that “FAS will continue forming the conditions for fair competition on the market of banking services and draft proposals on amending several laws that unreasonably sets barriers for selecting credit organizations for depositing budgetary funds and assets of some legal entities at banks. According to FAS, such barriers include requirements for a threshold of the assets (capital) owned by a credit organization (1 - 20 billion RUB); a long-term creditability ranking assigned by international and Russian rating agencies; and a general license for banking operations.

“As a competition authority, FAS will undertake efforts to replace these absolute values with the values that truly characterize financial stability and solvency of organizations”, concluded Andrey Kashevarov.