OREANDA-NEWS. January 27, 2010. According to Igor Artemyev, the Head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia), the main lesson from the crisis is that despite enormous decline in consumer demand, not only the prices have not come down but in some cases they have increased considerably, reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

"We have not yet fully analyzed this phenomenon but one of the causes of such a situation is monopolism in the Russian economy", stated Igor Artemyev on 21st January 2010 at the conference "Russia and the World: Challenges of the New Decade" in the Academy of National Economy.

In particular, the Head of FAS Russia drew attention to the fact that last year with devaluation of the Ruble prices for medications had jumped up sharply. At the moment, however, the dollar went down to nearly 29 Rubles but no adequate price decrease for medications was observed.

Igor Artemyev promised that FAS Russia would carefully follow-up the situation on the market of pharmaceuticals and if necessary would initiate antimonopoly cases against violators of the Law "On Protection of Competition".