OREANDA-NEWS. On July 13, 2009 Igor Artemyev, the Head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia), presented the report "On the State of Competition in the Russian Federation in 2008" at the meeting of the Presidium of the Government of the Russian Federation. The report highlighted major obstacles for developing competition in some sectors of the economy and outlined the main priorities in the work of the Antimonopoly Service, reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

The Head of FAS Russia informed that in 2008 FAS initiated in total 6540 antimonopoly cases, of which 2978 cases against the authorities.

In 2008, the due fines, imposed by the Antimonopoly Service, amounted to around 13 billion Rubles.

Igor Artemyev said that the privileged position of individual state-run corporations and selective aid to individual market participants from federal budget resources had had negative impact upon the level of competition.

In the period of economic crisis, the goals of the antimonopoly policy are: giving regional dimension to the antimonopoly policy; developing competition as a tool for increasing economic efficiency; observing competitive principles in an anti-crisis policy; preventing infringement of the interests of society and business in course of companies' restructuring and financial recovery; creating maximum favourable conditions for development and market entry of new highly efficient companies; advancing an information support system for conduct of business.

Among the major tasks of the Antimonopoly Service in 2009, Igor Artemyev emphasised enforcement of legislative initiatives of the Government of the Russian Federation on protection of competition and reforms of the legislation on natural monopolies.

According to FAS Russia, the high-priority measures for protecting competition also include:

- Developing competition in education, including elimination of excessive procedures for licensing and accreditation of educational institutions; eliminating the practice of transferring state functions to public agencies and state-run enterprises; increasing transparency of the work of educational institutions;

- Reducing the number of state and municipal unitary enterprises, especially operating on competitive markets;

- Developing small business; in particular, reducing administrative barriers; expanding the access to state procurement, credit resources, real estate and engineering infrastructure;

- Expanding the use of exchange pricing mechanisms;

- Developing competition on the market of financial services; in particular, expanding the number of organisations that accept payments from the population; restricting the bank practice of unilateral changing of the rates for account management for organisations and entrepreneurs; establishing minimum standards for insurance services.