Key issues and strategies for advancing commodity and raw material exchange trading in Russia, as well as within international frameworks involving Russia, were discussed at the IX International Scientific and Practical Conference "Antimonopoly Policy: Science, Practice, Education," held on November 14-15 at the Higher School of Economics. The event was co-organized by the BRICS Competition Law and Policy Centre (BRICS Centre) and the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia (FAS).
With global commodity price volatility and market monopolization on the rise, exchange trading is becoming an increasingly critical tool for fostering market competition. This mechanism promotes transparency and efficiency in pricing and resource allocation, noted Alexey Ivanov, Director of the BRICS Centre, during the plenary session on "Commodity Exchange Trading as a Tool for Competition Development in Russia, EAEU and BRICS."
Alexey Koshel, Vice‑Rector of the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE University), highlighted the role of academic institutions in improving Russia's economic and legal development model amid current challenges. He underscored the importance of commodity exchanges in sustaining competition, particularly under the pressures of sanctions.
“We must develop our own fair pricing mechanisms, which align with one of the fundamental constitutional values in our country,”
Koshel emphasized.
Anatoly Aksakov, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on the Financial Market, pointed out the importance of forming national exchange indicators.
“I am confident that our exchange platforms, trade organizers, having accumulated a huge experience and having received legislative support, will show themselves at their best,”
he said.
Igor Artemyev, President of the St‑Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange (SPIMEX), explained the role of the stock exchange as an effective tool for systemic government antimonopoly, fiscal and macroeconomic policy. The exchange infrastructure ensures fair pricing, balance of supply and demand, tax transparency, openness of transactions with counterparties, fight against gray exports, demonopolization, decartelization, etc. SPIMEX is the leader of the Russian commodity exchange market, one of the top three global SPOT exchanges, and its projected trading volume for 2024 is $24 billion.
The Kazan Declaration of the XVI BRICS Summit states:
“We welcome the initiative of the Russian side to establish a grain (commodities) trading platform within BRICS (the BRICS Grain Exchange) and to subsequently develop it including expanding it to other agricultural sectors.”
The implementation of the project should guarantee the formation of price indicators that will be recognized by the BRICS countries and used for state regulation and cross-border settlements, Igor Artemyev believes.
“Let's create a global price exchange agency in a few years, with the support of such BRICS countries as China, India, Iran, South Africa and our other partners and neighbors. We are able to develop global projects related to prices in international markets and play an active role in managing these processes. We hope that politicians will support us in this endeavor. It also represents an important technological and scientific challenge,”
urged the SPIMEX President.
Ivan Chebeskov, Deputy Minister of Finance of the Russian Federation, emphasized the need to create incentives to bring more goods to the exchanges and develop price indicators to determine market pricing. The most important tasks include increasing trade turnover with the EAEU countries and the creation of a joint BRICS exchange, and, in general, the development of a new independent financial and exchange infrastructure for the BRICS.
Maxim Ermolovich, Minister of Competition and Antimonopoly Regulation of the Eurasian Economic Commission, proposed measures necessary to build a common exchange market. Among them are harmonization of the legislation of the EAEU member countries in the field of exchange trading, ensuring transparency and trust in the common market, elimination of technical barriers (different technological level of exchanges becomes a problem), harmonization of trade rules, development of a dispute resolution mechanism and others.
“Each country is trying to solve its problems by creating a common exchange market. Someone wants to sell goods, someone wants to participate in trading. It is necessary to take advantage of this interest, to provide buyers with ample opportunities, to create competition in this market, to demonopolize it, then we will get a positive effect,”
he is convinced.
We should not forget that exchange trading was created not so much for regulators as for market participants, reminded Larisa Selyutina, Advisor to the Deputy Chairman of the Bank of Russia. The exchange should take on additional functions to develop services that will be convenient for clients, then they will be willing to pay for these conveniences and use the exchange.
“Only then will we be able to find synergy between the regulator and those who generally create value in this market, i.e. business participants,”
Ms. Selyutina believes.
Elena Tsyshevskaya, Head of the Department for Regulation over Fuel‑and‑ Energy Complex and Chemical Industry of the FAS Russia, reminded that if a number of criteria are met, the price set on the exchange cannot be considered monopolistically high. Thus, exchange trading helps to reduce risks for business, as the antimonopoly regulator has no grounds to apply certain sanctions.
The tasks of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation include the creation of favorable external conditions for the progressive development of the Russian economy. Thus, the development of exchange trading mechanisms with foreign partners, including within the BRICS and EAEU, is considered in the context of comprehensive diversification of the geography of economic cooperation under the current geopolitical conditions, which implies cooperation with the states of the global South and East, said Dmitry Birichevsky, Director of the Department of Economic Cooperation of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“The key to competitiveness and sovereign development of the world's majority countries is active inclusion in the processes of forming new algorithms of interaction on the basis of recognizing the diversity, importance of all participants in world trade and mutual consideration of interests,”
he believes.
Andrey Mikhailishin, CEO and founder of Digital Payments, recently highlighted the ongoing development of the BRICS Pay payment system and the BRICS Clear initiative, which aims to create an independent cross-border settlement and depository infrastructure. In his remarks, Mikhailishin emphasized the importance of decentralization for cross-border exchange platforms, urging that no single country should hold a monopoly over such systems. He also pointed out that the key to success lies in first developing practical and effective services for businesses. These services, once adopted by the private sector, can then be scaled and presented as viable systems for other countries. According to Mikhailishin, this bottom-up approach is far more effective than attempting to build consensus around overarching principles or policies.
The discussion was also attended by Vitaly Dianov, Chairman of the Association of Antimonopoly Experts; Irina Knyazeva, Doctor of Economics, Professor, Head of “Competition Policy and Economics Research Center” Research Laboratory at the Siberian Institute of Management/Branch of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Mohammadreza Tahmasbi, International Relations Officer at Iran Mercantile Exchange (IME), as well as representatives of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the academic community.
The conference also included a meeting of the BRICS Working Group on Cartels, where the strengthening of inter-agency cooperation to detect and combat cartels was discussed. In addition, the agenda of the conference included a discussion of pricing problems in food markets and the current challenges of antimonopoly regulation in financial markets.
