Russian Competition Authority Federal Antimonopoly Service ("FAS"); initiated monitoring activities in the food, seed and GSM markets.
First, the FAS instructed its regional offices in the Far East Federal District to monitor the retail prices of socially significant food products as part of measures taken by the Russian government to prevent unreasonable increases in the prices of food products due to restrictions on products coming from China. In this context, inspections will be carried out by regional FAS offices if they are found to have a significant price increases.
Second, FAS conducted a market study for soybean seed market as part of ongoing efforts to reduce Russia's dependence on import in seed supply. FAS has arrived to a conclusion that the market is highly concentrated with underdeveloped competition. FAS highlighted the following in terms of barriers to market entry:
Based on the findings, FAS proposed a series of measures to improve competition in the domestic market and to reduce import dependency.
Finally, FAS has started to monitor the costs of GSM companies to find out the reasons behind price increase in GMS services. As the first step of the study, GMS companies; MegaFon PJSC, MTS PJSC, VympelCom PJSC and T2 Mobile Ltd were asked to inform FAS of the reasons for the price increases. Replies have been received from all companies. In addition, the companies have informed the FDA about the tariffs they plan to implement within the Russian Federation in the coming future. FAS is currently analysing approximately 4000 tariff plans received from GSM companies.