FAS orders NCSP to pay income from 'monopolistic activities' to budget
MOSCOW. March 23 (Interfax) - The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) will issue prescriptions to Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port (NCSP) that require the stevedoring company to pay income received from inflated tariffs to the Federal Treasury.
"The presidium of Russia's FAS has approved a decision on the need to issue prescriptions to NCSP to pay to the federal budget income received from monopolistic activities. The prescriptions will be issued to the company together with the complete text of the decisions in the case," the FAS said in a statement.
The regulator has therefore found that NCSP violated competition law by setting monopolistically high prices for handling ore, fertilizer, containers, ferrous and nonferrous metals, oil and oil products at the Novorossiysk port (Point 1, Part 1, Article 10 of the Law on Protection of Competition).
The violations could have been avoided if NCSP did not set the prices for its services in U.S. dollars and had switched prices previously set in foreign currency to Russian rubles in a timely manner, the regulator said.
"The FAS commission concluded that PJSC NCSP, which holds a dominant position and is a natural monopoly, had no grounds to increase rates in 2015, consequently the company abused its dominant position by setting a monopolistically high price," the regulator said.
The regulator did not specify the amount that will be paid to the Treasury, but the press release said that the "profit earned by PJSC NCSP in 2015 increased by two times (207%) compared to 2014, and the profit margin grew from 56% to 300%."