Because in so far – Newspaper Kommersant No. 3 (7448) dated 01/11/2023

Following the government’s approval of the roadmap for the development of commodity exchange trading in the domestic market, the FAS began to create infrastructure for it. Thus, the service proposes to create on its basis an interdepartmental commission from representatives of the Bank of Russia, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Economics and other departments – it will evaluate the methodology for calculating price indicators for goods in order to form a pricing system in Russia independent of global markets. The FAS expects that the appearance of domestic indicators will reduce the dependence of the economy on world prices – market participants have lost the opportunity to use them due to the incomplete convertibility of the ruble and restrictions on the participation of the Russian Federation in global trade.

The FAS continues to build the infrastructure for the development of a system of national indicators – they should ensure a transparent pricing system in the domestic market and reduce dependence on foreign suppliers of price information. To do this, the FAS proposes to create a collegial body on the basis of its Exchange Committee to assess commodity price indicators. According to the draft government decree prepared by the service, in addition to the FAS itself, it will include representatives of the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Economics, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Energy, the Federal Tax Service and the Bank of Russia. The basis for assessing the methodology for calculating the indicators will be the statement of the organizer of trade in the Central Bank, follows from the document.

Now market participants are experiencing a shortage of price information, since they have lost the opportunity to use international indicators due to the partial isolation of the Russian Federation from foreign markets and the incomplete convertibility of the ruble, which creates ambiguity when converting world prices into rubles due to discrepancies in the official, exchange and real exchange rates in the cash markets. In order to create a “sovereign” pricing system, the government at the end of December approved the “road map” developed by the Federal Antimonopoly Service for systemic development in the domestic market of commodity exchange trading. In total, the roadmap included 38 measures, including the exchange of data between the exchange and departments (see Kommersant dated December 28, 2022).

The FAS explains the need to create domestic indicators by the fact that, until recently, Russian sites used foreign data, including foreign commodity indices. “Domestic prices linked to the so-called netbacks create prerequisites for overpricing Russian producers and consumers,” the service added. It is assumed that in 2023 the use of indicators for key products will begin – their list, we recall, will be determined by the government. At the same time, in global markets, the formation of specific price indicators is in itself an evolutionary market process leading to the improvement of the mechanisms for their calculation, but the Russian markets do not have time for this. It is likely that the collegial body should accelerate the search for optimal pricing options by analyzing the data of departmental information systems of its participants – the commission will include both departments consolidating data on expenditures (Minfin) and settlements (Central Bank and Federal Tax Service), and regulators of the main markets – fuel energy, commodity and food. However, it is still difficult to predict the effectiveness of such interaction – the generalization of the rules of the game for such data arrays will require significant analytical work and mutual alignment of the interests of many industries.

Oleg Moskvitin, Acting Director of the HSE Institute for Competition Policy and Market Regulation, draws attention to the possibility of revising indicators that have become ineffective at the motivated request of any member of the FAS Exchange Committee. Head of Economic Research at Kulik & Partners Law. Economics Tatyana Basova notes that exchange and OTC price indices are often used by experts or companies to develop the commodity market without a detailed study of the mechanism for their calculation and factors that may influence their dynamics. “The document at the government level, which provides for the synergy of the powers of the FAS Exchange Committee and interested federal executive bodies in the issue of assessing national indices (indicators) for goods, solves the problem of the “chronic underexploration” of pricing factors for commodity resources and reduces the need for direct price regulation or the consequences non-market pricing in the domestic market,” says the expert. It is assumed that the new institution, due to the consistency of the positions of the involved authorities and businesses, will reduce the number of FAS price prescriptions (to stop the abuse of dominant position by economic entities), which the service used as an operational measure of antimonopoly price control in 2021–2022.

Diana Galieva, Oleg Sapozhkov