OREANDA-NEWS. November 27, 2013. India’s Prime-Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh inaugurated a formal opening ceremony of the III BRICS Competition Conference on “Competition Enforcement in BRICS countries: Problems and Goals”, organized by competition authorities of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

A FAS delegation led by Igor Artemiev, delegations of the antimonopoly bodies of BRICS countries, representatives of competition authorities of Australia, Austria, Canada, Fiji, France, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Singapore, Sweden, the USA, and international organizations such as OECD, UNCTAD and the World Bank took part in the Conference.

The Head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service Igor Artemiev made a report at the plenary session about “Antimonopoly Regulation in Russia at the Present Stage”.

The Head of FAS discussed the main objectives of Russian antimonopoly authority: to liberalize antimonopoly regulation for companies that do fair business, and to increase enforcement efficiency on the basis of the best world practices, including OECD recommendations and the best practices of BRICS countries. He talked about the results of FAS work, which are a reliable confirmation that the vector of developing competition policy in the Russian Federation is correct. Mr. Artemiev informed participants on the use of new institutions – warnings and admonitions, and on liberalizing control over economic concentration, which enable FAS to considerably reduce administrative burden upon business; he also outlined the main FAS priorities.

Igor Artemiev put forward an initiative to strengthen result-oriented cooperation between competition authorities of BRICS counties, particularly, in developing coherent approaches and undertaking joint actions to prevent and suppress unfair business practices of big international companies on the markets of BRICS countries, considering transnational mergers that influence BRICS markets significantly, and combating international cartels.

Igor Artemiev pointed out: “Combating cartels, particularly, international ones, is one of the most important priorities for FAS. To efficiently investigate international cartels, result-oriented cooperation of competition authorities on the global markets is necessary. FAS already has experience of cooperating with foreign competition authorities in investigating certain cross-border violations of competition law. BRICS is an ideal platform for implementing new forms of cooperation between competition authorities in the field of enforcement”.