On October 29, Alexey Ivanov, Director of the BRICS Competition Centre, and Andrey Tsyganov, Deputy Head of the FAS of Russia, spoke at the 33rd ASEAN Experts Group on Competition (AEGC) meeting.
In the final declaration of the XVI BRICS Summit held on October 22-24 in Kazan, the member states reaffirmed the commitment to further enhancing and developing cooperation on competition law and policy issues among the BRICS countries, said Andrey Tsyganov.
The document also noted the importance of the BRICS Competition Centre's role in knowledge creation and knowledge sharing among BRICS competition authorities, as well as importance of competition law development and removing of monopolistic barriers in economy and trade.
The Deputy Head of the FAS highlighted the main formats and areas of cooperation between the BRICS antimonopoly authorities and stressed that cooperation between the BRICS and ASEAN regulators can make a significant contribution to the development of competition in the member countries. Among the priority areas of cooperation are the fight against cartels, antitrust regulation of digital markets and the pharmaceutical sector.
The cooperation includes the exchange of publications and legislative initiatives, as well as the organization of joint events, which will allow BRICS and ASEAN countries to share experiences and improve enforcement.
“I suggest that ASEAN competition authorities take an active part in the BRICS Working Group for the Research of Competition Issues in Pharmaceutical Markets, as well as in the BRICS Working Group on Cartels,”
said Andrey Tsyganov.
The BRICS Competition Law and Policy Centre provides scientific and analytical support to the BRICS competition authorities, and Alexey Ivanov, Director of the Centre, described its activities. The Centre implements research projects within the framework of the main areas defined jointly by the BRICS competition authorities on the topics of the BRICS Working Groups for the research of competition issues in socially important markets.
The Centre also provides assistance to BRICS competition authorities in their enforcement activities, including research and analysis. Over the years, the Centre has established a broad network of expert partnerships, which has been joined by leading universities from BRICS and partner countries.
The most important goal of the Centre, according to Alexey Ivanov, is to create a BRICS-oriented discourse in the field of competition protection and development. Competition law is currently dominated by established Western institutions that develop theories and solutions that are often ineffective for developing countries. These countries face inequality and high concentration in markets ranging from digital to pharmaceuticals, and lack the resources to develop appropriate theories and practices that reflect their interests and needs.
“All declarations of the BRICS countries and their leaders over the years have emphasized the need for more inclusive economic growth in the global economy. However, the world is currently moving in the opposite direction - towards increased concentration, growing inequality and monopolization of key sectors of the economy,”
Ivanov noted. At the same time, opportunities for cooperation are limited, as there is still no global competition regime. The only document that is recommendatory, rather than mandatory, is the UN Set of Principles and Rules on Competition adopted in 1980.
In this context, the BRICS Competition Centre acts as a platform for interaction between antitrust regulators of developing countries. From the very beginning of its work, the Centre has focused on socially important markets, in particular food and agricultural products. In investigating these markets, BRICS experts and competition authorities have used a global value chain analysis approach. This approach reveals how key inputs affect final prices and why problematic bottlenecks arise in the chain.
According to Teresa Moreira, UNCTAD's Head of Competition Division, it were the BRICS countries that brought this topic to the global agenda, and today global value chain analysis is recognized as effective by competition authorities around the world.
The first notable result of cooperation between the BRICS competition authorities was the joint work on reviewing the Bayer-Monsanto merger. The remedies imposed on the merging parties gave a new momentum to the competitive dynamic in the Russian and other BRICS agricultural markets.
“In the case of this merger, the value of the cooperation framework created with academics and experts from the BRICS countries became evident. The partnership between academia and the authorities proved to be extremely effective,”
Ivanov emphasized.
Strengthening the interaction of antitrust regulators, the Centre initiated a sectoral study of the BRICS grain markets, which will show what is happening in the global grain trade sector, where the power of global grain traders of the so-called ABCD group (ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus) has reached unprecedented scale.
“Creating more inclusive, developing country-focused mechanisms for global grain trade, including BRICS commodity exchanges, will be the focus of the next sectoral study,”
said the Director of the BRICS Centre.
The Head of the AEGC Secretariat thanked the FAS of Russia and Alexey Ivanov for the presentation and noted that the areas for cooperation proposed by Russia coincide with the interests of ASEAN countries. He stressed that AEGC has already established cooperation with the BRICS Centre and is interested in cooperation on further projects that are not only academic but also practical in nature.
“We are impressed with the work and projects of the BRICS Competition Centre. We are watching with great interest to see what impact [the Centre's] research will have on our fair competition agenda,”
said the head of the AEGC Secretariat.
ASEAN representatives also expressed interest in participating in the next meeting of the BRICS Working Group on Cartels at the conference “Antimonopoly Policy: Science, Practice, Education” to be held on November 14-15 at the HSE University in Moscow.
The ASEAN Experts Group on Competition (AEGC) was established in August 2007 as a regional forum to discuss and cooperate on competition policy and law (CPL). In the run-up to the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) in 2015, the AEGC has set its work towards four priority areas: (1) strengthening the regulatory environment in ASEAN; (2) Institutional capacity building and law enforcement of CPL in ASEAN; (3) developing a strategy and tools for regional competition advocacy; and (4) building cross-cutting regional initiatives.
