FAS to open more than a ten new cases against stevedoring firms
MOSCOW. June 29 (Interfax) - The Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) intends to open ten or more new cases against stevedoring firms due to tariffs.
"We carried out a special investigation with the railways and found dreadful price hikes for the services of stevedoring firms," FAS chief Igor Artemyev told reporters.
"We used to be big advocates of deregulation in this area, and never hid this at the FAS. We thought this was a competitive environment, there are quite a lot of stevedores at our ports. But in fact this resulted in a rise in the corresponding tariffs, which are gobbling up half the entire cost of freight shipment in Russia," he said.
"We've opened nine official anti-monopoly investigations and will soon be opening ten or so more, absolving the railways of blame, and laying this, provisionally, on the stevedoring firms, whose heads started spinning following deregulation. They decided to make money on this at the expense of the customer, the consignors and, ultimately, the people who consume their services. They've started serving invoices in foreign currency for these services as well," he said.
All these companies "will be punished" if the FAS succeeds in winning the cases. "We'll pursue them until the end, until they lower their tariffs and stop setting them in foreign currency but in rubles," Artemyev said.
"We're even discussing a return to tariff regulation this sphere," he said.
"This will be a good lesson for those companies that get freedom to act from the state and use it in such a bad way for the consumer. Of course it is an issue on the sort of scale that will be discussed in the government," he said.
The FAS said on June 21 that it had opened cases against nine stevedores on suspicion of setting high monopolistic prices for handling containers, grain, oil and mineral fertilizers, the regulator said.
Cases were opened against Murmansk Commercial Seaport , Novorossiysk Commercial Seaport (NCSP) , First Container Terminal, Petrolesport, St. Petersburg Container Terminal, Vostochnaya Stevedoring Company, Primorsk Commercial Seaport and Tuapse Commercial Seaport.
If they are proved to have set and maintained monopolistic prices, they could, in keeping with Section 2 of Article 14.31 of the Administrative Violations Code, be fined between 1% and 15% of their sales revenue on the market on which the offences were committed.
