BAKU, Azerbaijan, Apr. 23
By Ilkin Seyfaddini – Trend:
Since the beginning of its activity in January 2019, the Antimonopoly Committee of Uzbekistan has developed about 50 drafts of various legal acts aimed at improving the competitive environment, simplifying business activities and protecting consumer rights, a representative of the press service of the committee told Trend in an interview.
According to the representative of the press service, the Committee has prepared drafts for the new version of the Competition Law and the Strategy for the development of competition on commodity and financial markets for the period from 2020 through 2024.
"The Committee has assessed the impact on competition of more than 350 draft regulations prepared by ministries and departments, and in 79 percent of them identified anti-competitive rules. An additional 15 monopolized markets were identified. More than 2,600 anti-competitive actions of monopolies and government agencies at various levels, resulted in compensations of more than $25 million. As part of ensuring control over bidding in public procurement, the committee participated in 180 tenders and more than 5,000 procurement procedures were checked, which revealed 1,100 anti-competitive actions," the rep said.
According to the rep, only for 1Q2019 the Committee was involved in 26 tenders and eight tenders with a total starting value of more than $550 million were stopped because of anti-competitive actions. More than 140 transactions of economic concentration have been considered and approved by Committee, for a total amount of more than $350 million of which more than 70 percent fall on foreign investors.
"The committee, together with the competent authorities, established daily monitoring and control over retail prices for 35 types of basic consumer goods, including 22 types of socially significant goods during the coronavirus pandemic," said a representative of the press service of the Antimonopoly Committee of Uzbekistan.
According to the Committee's statistics, since January 2019, the largest number of small businesses and micro-firms has been established in trade (39.1 percent), industry (21 percent), construction (9.4 percent), agriculture, forestry and fisheries (eight percent), housing and nutrition services (7.8 percent) and transportation and storage (3.2 percent).
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