FAS against ratings

The department was developed by the anti -crisis measures of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) at the end of last week proposed a number of measures aimed at soon overcoming the crisis, as well as to increase competition.

Firstly, the agency proposes to abandon the ratings of international rating agencies and assessments of its own authorized capital when deciding on the allocation of public centuries to banks. According to FAS deputy leader Andrei Kashevarov, FAS has already sent such an offer to the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Economic Development. Instead of international ratings, the department offers to use the internal instructions of the Central Bank.

"The Central Bank has instruction No. 2005, it divides all credit organizations into five groups, and more than half of all banks belong to the first and second," Kashevarov believes.

According to the FAS, this mechanism will, in particular, reduce interest rates on loans. “If we put everyone in one row, we will create conditions for competition. Remember when the Ministry of Finance allowed more than 100 banks to place budget funds, lending rates decreased,” Kashevarov convinced. Only the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs and the Association of Regional Banks supported these proposals of the FAS.

Another measure of support may be a return to special accounts in banks for the target distribution of budget funds allocated to support the real sector. This proposal was also sent to the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Economic Development.

According to the FAS, cases of misuse of budget funds have become more frequent. Special accounts will make a system for supporting the real sector more transparent, and money will be able to be sent to state and commercial banks.

According to Kashevarov, this proposal concerns only funds allocated from the National Welfare Fund and temporarily free funds distributed by the Ministry of Finance, but it will not affect the money provided by the Central Bank for unsteady auctions. “This task cannot be assigned to the Central Bank, all the central banks have short money. Everything that the Central Bank sends is intended to maintain the current liquidity,” Kashevarov said.

In the field of improving the competitiveness of the Russian economy, the FAS offers to give it more authority. The service proposes to allow it to prescribe to companies that occupy a dominant position in the market, to sell part of the products on the exchange. According to Andrei Kashevarov, for this it is necessary to amend the law on commodity exchanges.

So that the monopolist does not establish a monopoly price on the exchange, the department of Igor Artemyev is going to control sales volumes, and the exchange may establish rules that prevent the establishment of a monopoly high price. "There will be a onset of counterclaims or an auction for an increase - for each case there will be its own rules that take into account the features of each commodity market," said Andrei Kashevarov.

He added that the FAS has already agreed on this proposal with the Federal Financial Market Service, and also found support to the Ministry of Economic Development.

According to some experts, if the initiative is approved, this will stimulate the output primarily vertically integrated oil companies (WINK) to the recently opened St. Petersburg commodity-rash exchange. So far, the volume of trading on the exchange is small in oil products, since large Wink prefer direct long -term contracts to the exchange.

Another initiative of the FAS concerns retail trade. According to Andrei Kashevarov, the FAS proposes to amend the law “On Trade”, the essence of which is to replace such a dominance parameter as the market share, with the volume of trade. "Instead of shares in groups of goods, we propose to establish the size of the retail turnover of the network as a determining factor of dominance," Kashevarov said. According to the official, the size of the turnover will be determined by the government’s decree, and if the turnover of one of the networks exceeds the threshold value, this will say that the company occupies a dominant position in the market.

In the previous version of the bill, the FAS proposed to recognize as dominant those networks that occupy over 35% of the market within the same administrative education. At the moment, the bill “On Trade” is at the stage of approval in the Ministry of Justice and after that it is necessary to pass the audit at the level of the government commission. However, the relevant departments, the FAS, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Industry and Trade still cannot fully agree on the project.

12/07/2008 / Andrey Biryukov, the material was published in the "newspaper" No. 233 dated 08.12.2008.