OREANDA-NEWS. December 25, 2013. The Head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) Igor Artemiev and his Deputy Andrey Tsyganov opened a research-to-practice workshop of a new Department of Competitive Industrial Policy, at the Faculty of Economics, Moscow State University named after Lomonosov.

At the workshop, Igor Artemiev informed students and lecturers of Moscow State University and representatives of business community about FAS work, its powers, as well as the achievements of and challenges to Russian competition authority on the course towards liberalizing the law and removing excessive administrative barriers.

“FAS increasingly becomes a body of preventative control because we understand that pressure upon business especially in the period of crisis must be relieved. To this purpose, in particular, we have introduces the mechanism of prevention which enables entrepreneurs to straighten and make the right steps towards developing competition”, emphasized Igor Artemiev.

According to statistical data, the number of petitions, notifications and cases has already decreased considerably. With expanding the institutions of warnings and admonitions it is expected that the number of initiated case will decrease by 200-300%.

Igor Artemiev drew special attention to the transparent public procurement procedures that does not have analogues in any country of the world. “All offers except the closed offers of state defence procurement are published at the single web-site - www.zakupki.gov.ru, enabling entrepreneurs from any region of our country to make the most beneficial offer for the government customers. All public procurements are consolidated at another web-site - www.torgi.gov.ru”.

The Head of FAS also informed the workshop participants about establishing a supra-national body under the framework of the Customs Union that will also be responsible for competition policy. “In particular, we have been able to establish such modern law in antimonopoly regulation and trading practices that Russia shares the 17th position in the Performance ranking of the competition authorities issued by Global Competition Review – together with such countries as Austria, Norway, Portugal, Finland, Sweden, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, etc. Also FAS is the first federal executive body that is awarded ISO 9001:2008 International Management Quality Certificate“.

Summing up, Igor Artemiev emphasized that FAS is always open to young skilled specialists.