JSC Center for the Competition Policy Development and Protection
The JSC Center for the Competition Policy Development and Protection (hereinafter referred to as the Center) was established with the Resolution of the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan №1127 dated December 2, 2008 as a subordinate organization to the Antitrust agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
From 2015 the Center is an independent non-governmental company.
The Center team includes over dozens of professionals specializing in the economic and legal aspects of antitrust regulation, most of which have decades of experience in both antitrust agencies and research organizations and companies in different economic sectors, and have academic degrees of doctors and associates in science.
The main activities of the JSC Center for the Competition Policy Development and Protection (hereinafter the Center) are following (article 4 of the Articles of Incorporation of the Center):
1) conducting analytical and scientific and applied researches in competition policy;
2) forecasting economic consequences arising from monopolization and economic concentration of commodity markets, as well as state regulation of the economy;
3) surveys and analyses on commodity and financial markets to determine a share of market dominance and level of the competition, barriers to competition development;
4) analysis of consequences of transactions on economic concentration, as well as transactions for acquisition of shares, interests, equity units, reorganization of market entities that have a dominant (monopoly) position;
5) economic appraisal, preparing opinions for decision-making on mergers (acquisitions) of market entities, as well as other types of transactions provided for by current legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan;
6) development of guidance and methodological materials on the application of legislative and other statutory and regulatory enactments on competition policy issues, as well as on the evaluation of activities of the commodity and financial markets entities;
7) organization and implementation of trainings and consultations on the application of legislative and other statutory and regulatory enactments on competition policy issues;
8) preparation and publication of reference, methodological, educational and regulatory literature on competition policy;
9) organization of seminars, conferences and meetings on antitrust policy and related issues;
10) consulting services.
The experts of the Center took part in the largest antimonopoly investigations conducted by the antitrust authorities of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation. Customers of the Center are large Kazakhstani and international companies operating in all major economic sectors.
Experts of the Center take an active part in lawmaking activity; they are members of working groups of the Board and the Conciliation Commission for Investigations under the Antimonopoly Agency of Kazakhstan. The Center takes an active part at the Conciliation commission of the Committee in the activity of the conciliation commission. For example, the Conciliation Commission took into account the Center's rationale when reviewing results of an investigation regarding coal-mining companies on anticompetitive actions and agreed with the findings that there was no violation in their actions imputed by regional antimonopoly authorities.
In addition, the Center experts run joint research and training projects with antitrust authorities. In 2015, the Center together with the Antimonopoly Authority of Kazakhstan opened an Antitrust Regulation Chair at the Eurasian National University named after L.N. Gumilyov, which is the first in the country, where the Center's experts give lectures now for university students. In addition, a branch of the mentioned Chair is open and functioning based on the Center. The Center prepared and published first training manual in Kazakhstan on the competitive law of the Republic of Kazakhstan (2015) and scientific and practical commentary on the norms of the antitrust legislation (2016, 2017). Experts of the Center regularly run trainings and seminars for employees of the Antimonopoly Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
The JSC Center for the Development and Protection of Competition Policy was incorporated in the list in 2013 and is the only organization of the post-Soviet area among the member organizations of the Research Partnership Platform (RPP) of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) on competition law.
