OREANDA-NEWS. July 23, 2014. The Ministry of Economics of the Republic of Belarus organized workshops on the issues of antimonopoly regulation over retail and sale of medicines for representatives of government agencies, business community and regional authorities.

A delegation of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) led by the Head of FAS Department for Control over Social Sphere and Trade, Timophei Nizhegorodtsev, took part in a workshop on “Antimonopoly Regulation over Retail”.

Timophei Nizhegorodtsev made a presentation on “Experience of Enforcement of the Law on Trading Activities in the Russian Federation. The Prospects of Developing Regulation in this Field.” The presentation reflected the need, methods and problems of regulating retail, the goals and tasks of No. 381-FZ active Federal Law “On the Fundamental Principles of the State Regulation of Trading Activities in the Russian Federation”, Russian experience of applying the law on trade and recommendations on resolving the most problematic regulatory issues.

On 15th July, at a workshop on “Antimonopoly Regulation over Medicine Sales”, Deputy Head of FAS Department for Control over Social Sphere and Trade, Nadezhda Sharavskaya, delivered a report on “Evaluating Affordability of Medicines Based on Analysis of Drug Prices and Pricing in Russia and the CIS, the EU and BRICS”.

She informed participants about the findings of an international comparative analysis of drug prices, with emphasis on the reasons for medicine costliness in Russia and some CIS states in spite of government-regulated prices, and outlined proposed measures aimed at increasing price affordability of medicines for the population and enhancing efficiency of budgetary spending for drug programmes.

In his next report on “Studying the Problems of Developing Competition on the Pharmaceutical Markets in the CIS Member-States”, Timophei Nizhegorodtsev gave a more detailed account on the problems of developing competition on the pharmaceutical markets within the CIS directly affecting drug prices, and presented FAS proposals to resolve them.

In the course of the visit the Russian delegation learned a lot about the specifics of development of the competition law in the Republic of Belarus and suggested to advance cooperation in the areas of developing competition on the pharmaceutical markets and in retail under the framework of joint investigations.