PRESS: Russian antitrust asks to ban state cos to buy new assets

MOSCOW, Feb 8 (PRIME) -- Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service has called for forbidding state companies and state unitary enterprises to buy new assets, both directly and through affiliates, business daily Vedomosti reported on Wednesday, citing a draft presidential decree submitted to the government and the authority’s Deputy Director Sergei Puzyrevsky.

The document also stipulates that state companies have to develop programs to sell core assets. Puzyrevsky said that state companies can keep such assets if they are effective and if full-scale market participants and the government does not deteriorate competition on the market.

The antitrust service also prepared a bill seeking to ban establishment of state unitary enterprises on competitive markets and offering to liquidate this type of business entity from February 1, 2018.

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