Antitrust mulls launching exchange trade in fertilizers in Russia

MOSCOW, Nov 22 (PRIME) -- Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service thinks it reasonable to launch exchange trading in fertilizers, Deputy Director Andrei Tsyganov told PRIME on Tuesday.

“We are now discussing terms, the mechanism, and stages of the launch of the exchange trade in mineral fertilizers together with the expert community. The service is interested in speeding up this process,” he said, adding that the exchange trade will help to establish fair and competitive prices for the commodity.

A preliminary analysis of Russia’s fertilizer market showed that many regional wholesale markets are highly concentrated and competition is undeveloped, which increases risks of violation of the antimonopoly legislation. The exchange trade is a good solution for that, and the types of fertilizers that will be sold on the exchange are now being defined by the service together with producers and consumers.

The service also said that a meeting of an expert council on Russia’s chemical industry has already studied the issue, and representatives for the Russian association of fertilizer producers and fertilizer makers Uralkali, UralChem, PhosAgro, and others took part in the meeting.

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