Antimonopolists Vs. Administration

<BR>The local branch of the RF Antimonopoly and Small Business Ministry (TU MAP) intends to do battle with administrative hurdles preventing the business development.<BR>TU MAP executives discussed the issue with independent city business groups recently.<BR>An open conference run by TU MAP Manager Oleg Kolomiychenko focused on the problems which businessmen are subject to when dealing with administrative organs repressing competition. Leading business figures and representatives from federal agencies took part in the event, though the former far outweighed the latter.<BR>Oleg Kolomiychenko started by noting that the inability to manage key processes emasculates the essence of economic policy, directed at regulating competition. Licensing, certification, registration and procedures for gaining permission, all to some degree fail to assist, and can even hinder, business development. Among other insufficiencies in the work of the organs of executive authority mentioned was the throwback of providing land plots with 'intended usages'.<BR>Kolomiychenko explained: "Work is going ahead to introduce tenders, and they should be informal. But I would not say that these procedures are democratic at the moment. I believe that effective competition mechanisms are simply absent. The decisions to supply plots with intended usages are taken, as previously, by the city investment tender committee, if not just by the governor himself." TU MAP's manager dismissed criticism of the city property committee's (KUGI) monopoly on dictating rent rates and the practice of free economic development zones, which violate the single economic space of a region.