OREANDA-NEWS. June 23, 2009. Vitaly Korolev, the Head of the FAS Russia's Department for Electric Power Industry, took part in the 6th International Forum "Russian Electric Power Industry: Reassessing Investment Possibilities and Strategies", where he made a report on the role of government regulation of electric power industry, reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

He raised the issues of antimonopoly regulation and control of the electric power markets, outlined the industry risks in the time of the economic crisis and described the main and prospective areas of the work of the antimonopoly authority in electric power industry.

Discussion of the report with the conference participants focused on the most pressing issues and problems of the work of electric power companies with fuel suppliers, and improvement of the normative acts on technological connection to electric grids.

Vitaly Korolev outlined the following main areas of antimonopoly control over electric power markets:

- Control over wholesale markets, including price manipulation;

- Control over retail markets, including non-discriminatory access to the services of natural monopolies;

- Control over economic concentration as part of approving transactions under the Federal Law "On Protection of Competition".

Statistical data on antimonopoly control of the electric power markets: in 2007 FAS Russia initiated around 1000 cases for violating the antimonopoly legislation on the markets of electric and heat power and issued around 500 determinations. In 2008 the antimonopoly bodies initiated nearly 700 cases related to electric power industry, of which: the markets of technological connection - around 300 cases, the markets of services for transmitting electric power - around180 cases.

Vitaly Korolev: "Analysis shows that considerable portion of antimonopoly cases related to preventing entry to the wholesale electric power market and other violations on retail markets, such as evading entry into c a contract by a person for whom it is a mandatory requirement; imposing unfavourable contract conditions; violating the established pricing procedures; and some other".

In his report Vitaly Korolev suggested the following methods of reducing the level of antimonopoly violations on the electric power markets:

- Formulating standard contracts for regulating legal relations between market participants and consumers;

- Drafting standard regulations for providing services in electric power industry (first of all, for technical connection), seeking the FAS Russia's approval and applying them in relations with customers;

- Developing the practice of public discussion of the issues of normative legal acts in electric power industry, violation of which can result in violating the antimonopoly legislation, and their enforcement (in particular, by FAS Russia's Expert Councils on Electric Power Industry);

- Discussing draft normative legal acts devised by FAS Russia or with participation of FAS Russia (currently, the Rules for Antimonopoly Regulation in Control over Electric Power Industry).