Participants of the fuel market believe that the arguments of the antimonopoly body, which accuse them of coordinated actions, are unfounded

The situation in which turned out to be entrepreneurs engaged in sale of oil products, has become a cause of a meeting of the National Chamber of entrepreneurs with participation of representatives of the competition authority and the participants of the fuel market.

According to the Managing Director - Director of the Department of Macroeconomics Nurlan Sakuov, NCE received complaints from associations of subjects of the market of petroleum products, regarding investigations of violations of the antitrust laws.

The Committee on Regulation of Natural Monopolies and Protection of Competition has conducted 23 investigations against 186 subjects of the market, which, according to the competition authority, raised the price of gasoline, acting in coordination. And the antimonopoly body believes this the case of price collusion. However, the entrepreneurs themselves do not think so.

"The fact is that after the cancellation of the state regulation of prices for gasoline AI -92 in September of this year, fuel market participants were given the right to set prices at their own discretion. But, as fuel is a socially significant product, the competition authority immediately reacted, seeing in these actions, price collusion and fined some large companies. By the way, the fines range from 3 to 5% of revenue ", - said Nurlan Sakuov.

In turn, as it was noted by the representative of Kazakhstani Fuel Association Zhaksylyk Zhankalov, despite the forecasts of the Ministry of Energy that set the prices for gasoline A-92 in the range of 140-150 tenge in September, the retailers sold it for 120-130 tenge per liter.

"If the state regulation remains in force, the maximum retail price for a specified type of fuel would be much higher than current one at the market", - he said.

According to him, the backlog of regulated retail prices from the purchasing wholesale prices led last year to catastrophic shortages of petroleum products in the country. This year in August at the retail market of petroleum products we can also observe a growing tension due to a lack of gasoline A-92 and on 4^th of September 2015 the Government decided to waive price controls on gasoline AI-92. According to the Ministry of Energy, if by 5 September 2015 in Kazakhstan was brought about 22 thousand tons of gasoline and 11 thousand tonnes were on the way, after the deregulation of gasoline prices, i.e. from 5 to 9 September, was bought according contracts about 80 thousand tons of gasoline AI-92 that helped to avoid shortages of gasoline. At the same time, none of the retail distributors of petroleum products were trying to earn excess profits, but only set the market price, by which imports from Russia was made possible", - said the representative of the association, adding that they do not violate the law.

However, according to the Committee on Regulation of Natural Monopolies and Protection of Competition, in spite of the objective reasons, began the investigation in respect of market entities, which believes that their actions are anti-competitive and coordinated. That is, the rules on competition, as say entrepreneurs themselves are used not in their favor, and the fact of collusion of prices must be proved. During the meeting the participants of the fuel market asked a reasonable question: why the actions of banks, which daily increase the exchange rate on the market are not considered as collusion of prices.

According to Managing Director of NCE, the problem is imperfection of the legislation, so entrepreneurs suffer. According to him, "antimonopoly bodies need to fix the price increase in the regions in order to start investigation of the market entities".

Meanwhile, says Nurlan Sakuov, competition authority before punishing businessmen, accusing them of fixing price need to notify them beforehand, as is done in civilized countries.

However, in the current law "On Competition" in case of the anticompetitive concerted action there is no obligation on behalf of the competition authority to notify a market entity. The notification is sent only in certain cases of abuse of dominant position.

Meanwhile, Nurlan Sakuov says that the law spells out the norm on the establishment of a conciliation commission. "There will be created a conciliation commission during the investigation by a competition authority, which, in addition to their staff, will include independent experts. Their task is to examine draft conclusions on the results of the investigation on the completeness and quality of the evidence in it", - said N. Sakuov.

By the way, antitrust authorities do not publish the results of the investigation, resorting to a trade secret, that, in fact, is also wrong. In other countries, this work is conducted transparently, the results of the investigation are published on the website of the antimonopoly authority. From now on, as it was stated by the representative of the NCE, this regulation will also be spelled out in the law.

However, even with the adoption of new amendments to the legislation, there is a problem with law enforcement, especially in regions where as it is often told by businessmen, the "punitive measures" are wrongly applied against them. That is, there is a blatant defiance of their rights.

"Meanwhile, for example, in the UK there is a presumption of innocence in relation to the entrepreneur, according to which, he can prove that he has not broken the law. In OECD countries, any investigation is based on the analysis, which is conducted by the working group with the participation of experts, and this work can be carried out during the year. This is a professional approach to business, when you do not harm interests of an entrepreneur. Unfortunately, we have quite the opposite", - said Nurlan Sakuov.

He also said that since the new year at NCE will start to operate a specially created Council for the Protection of Competition, at the meetings of which will be reviewed all violations of antitrust laws in respect of entrepreneurs.