State should decrease presence on financial services market - FAS

RUSSIA, Oct. 4. The state should curtail its presence on the financial services market, Federal Anti-Monopolist Service (FAS) chief Igor Artemyev has said.

"The state should leave this sector. The reduction of state assistance on the financial market will allow making it more healthy and stable. But if we act radically, this will lead to market destabilisation," he said at conference on protection of competition on financial market on Tuesday.

The FAS, the Central Bank and the Federal Service for Financial Markets (FSFM) are considering measures to protect competition on the financial services market, Artemyev said.

After a law on competition protection is passed, a joint commission with the FSFM will be set up.

"This is our closest partner and our points of view coincide. In particular, the FAS and FSFM are discussing a possibility of organising exchange trade in oil products and gas," Artemyev said.

Ministers of Economic Development and Trade German Gref and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin earlier also oppose the expansion of the state's presence in the economy.

Gref said that the "point of view that the state should broaden its presence in the economy and godfather some sectors is Neanderthal. Neanderthals died out and such ideology should die out too," he said.

Kudrin also sees the participation of the state in the economy as excessive.

He said the enlargement of it substantially affects the competitive environment.

Development of competition is also impeded by an increase of state expenditures and subsidies from the state budget, Kudrin said, Itar-Tass reported.