OREANDA-NEWS. September 23, 2013. The Interstate Council on Antimonopoly Policy (ICAP) held its 39th session to celebrate the 20th anniversary of establishing the Council.

The welcoming address was given by ICAP Chairman, the Head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) Igor Artemiev. He congratulated members of the Interstate Council, emphasizing their significant contribution to protection of competition within the CIS space and improving the antimonopoly law of the Commonwealth.

The Head of ICAP Secretariat Azam Usmanov said that “now, 20 years after founding the Council one can firmly state that during this period the antimonopoly bodies of the CIS member-states have been able to harmonize the antimonopoly law of their countries, develop a mechanism of coherent antimonopoly regulatory measures, establish the closest cooperation in anti-cartel enforcement and investigations of socially important markets under the framework of the Headquarters for Joint Investigations”.

Anatoly Golomolzin, the Head of the Headquarters for Joint Investigations of violations of the antimonopoly law of the CIS member-states reported on the results of the work of the Headquarters undertaken throughout seven years (http://fas.gov.ru/faswalk2/) and the outcome of the 23rd session of the Headquarters on 9th September 2013 (http://fas.gov.ru/fas-news/fas-news_34694.html).

He paid special attention to the efforts of the Headquarters to create regulatory framework determining the requirements for market pricing for oil products through exchange trading rather than reporting market players by information agencies.

Anatoly Golomolzin also informed ICAP Chairman that at the 23rd session of the Headquarters it had been decided to form an information platform on the pharmaceutical markets similar to the one for oil and oil products, which would contain information about the conditions for circulation of medicines in the CIS member-states. Countries with government regulation will be able to fix prices for medicines in accordance with the data at the information platform.

Currently prices for the same medicines in the CIS can differ significantly, sometimes up to 60 times.

Timophey Nizhegorodtsev, in his turn, drew attention to public procurement of medicines according to their active ingredient rather than trade name. Such practice will enable saving up to 100 million Rubles at a single auction. In Russia, however, the competition pyramid is turned upside down: expensive medicines are bought most frequently.

The session ended with presenting gifts and Certificates of Merits from ICAP and CIS Executive Council.