Rustem Khamitov took part in State Council meeting on promoting competition

UFA, 6 April 2018. /Bashinform News Agency/. Yesterday in Moscow the Head of Bashkortostan Rustem Khamitov took part in a State Council meeting on priority areas of activity of the Russian regions to promote competition in the country.

Measures on achieving the goals set forth in the Presidential Executive Order on State Competition Policy Guidelines were discussed at the meeting.

Opening the meeting the head of state Vladimir Putin stressed that the fundamental importance of the competition is determined by the Russian Constitution.

“Fair and honest competition is a basic condition for economic and technological development as well as for the country to reform and dynamically advance in all fields of life”, President underlined.

According to him, legal regulation in this area is generally in line with international standards. In recent years, four packages of anti-monopoly laws have been adopted, the fifth is under preparation. Now it is important to ensure their proper enforcement practice.

At the same time, there are still cases of direct ignoring of the legislation in the field of competition, especially by local authorities, which do not attach due importance to this topic. This state of affairs, in turn, causes enormous damage to the economy of the country, leads to an increase in budget expenditures, preserves backward production and low-quality products. In the end, it affects consumers.

In this regard, the President proposed to implement in the activities of government authorities, competitive approaches based on the promotion of competition. In addition, it is necessary to expand gradually the access of small businesses and socially oriented non-profits to the implementation of state and municipal orders and services.

Since 2015, the regions have started to implement the competition development guidelines approved by the Government. In December last year, an executive order was issued, which stipulated competition promotion as a priority for the authorities’ work, while the National Plan for 2018–2020 outlined specific industries and the targets of competition development.

“I believe that the same subject areas should be defined for each region – of course, this work should be carried out together with the regions, taking into account their specifics and capabilities. Thus, regional teams will have clear indicators as regarding the creation of a competitive environment, as well as their obligations to develop private enterprises in priority markets, including new ones, digital ones, and so on.

During the meeting, positive practices of a number of regions on the competition development were also noted. In particular, the General Director of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives Svetlana Chupsheva reported that the Republic of Bashkortostan had introduced a mechanism for technological and price audit of investment projects of natural monopolies entities and that allowed saving 138 million rubles and reducing tariffs for technological connection to electric networks to 53 percent.