THE SERIES OF MEETINGS AND EVENTS WITH THE EXPERTS OF THE WORLD BANK GROUP IN THE SPHERE OF COMPETITIVE POLICY TOOK PLACE IN MART WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE ADVISORY PROGRAM OF THE INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL CORPORATION (IFC)

Implementing the measures stipulated by the Protocol of Intent between the Ministry of Antimonopoly Regulation and Trade (MART) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a visit of experts from the World Bank Group in the field of competition policy took place on March 19-21, 2019 to discuss ongoing teamwork on the preparation of the draft Program for the Development of Competition in the Republic of Belarus.

On March 19, 2019, the ministry hosted a meeting of experts in the field of competition of the World Bank Group Gonzalo Miguel Koelie and Adam Esser, Head of the IFC Office in Belarus Olga Scherbina and IFC Project Coordinator on Improving the Business Environment in the Republic of Belarus Dmitry Pyatachenko with Minister of Antimonopoly Regulation and Trade Vladimir Koltovich. The current issues on the preparation of the draft Program for the Development of Competition, as well as the progress in preparing the draft Agreement on Cooperation between MART and the IFC were discussed at the meeting.

On March 20, 2019, the Office of the International Finance Corporation in the Republic of Belarus held a seminar for MART employees on issues of state competition policy and the implementation of antitrust laws based on current examples from international practice.

The following questions were offered to the participants of the seminar:

• World Bank approaches to competition policy, competitive neutrality, market opening approaches, practical implementation of legislation;
• features of competitive neutrality in infrastructure industries;
• cartel collusion, abuse of dominant position;
• experience of the Republic of Poland in the formation of state competition policy;
• regulatory decisions in the field of protection of competition, the results of the application of antimonopoly laws in retrospect.
   

On March 21, 2019, the ministry hosted a joint working meeting of representatives of the republican government bodies and experts of the World Bank Group on verification of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) questionnaires on regulating individual markets for goods and services in Belarus, on the basis of which the regulation index should be calculated markets for goods and services for the Republic of Belarus (PMR).

Reference: the questionnaire includes a significant amount of information on each analyzed industry. The interested government bodies were answered more than 1.4 thousand questions.

The PMR index calculation will be carried out by OECD experts for our country for the first time and is one of the key elements in preparing the draft Competition Development Program, since it not only provides an assessment of the state of competition in the country, but also allows identifying the main regulatory barriers and identifying key industries and markets development of competition.

PMR indices will be published by the OECD in 2019.