Recent Major Amendments To The Antimonopoly Legislation

On 1 January 2017, the Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan "On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Republic of Kazakhstan on Competition and State Support to Housing Development" (the Law) came into effect. The amendments were made in the framework of implementing five institutional reforms "100 concrete steps" which clearly defined the necessity to change the concept of Antimonopoly Service work and antimonopoly legislation and bring them into accordance with the standards of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The further improvement of the legislation in general was caused by the necessity to bring its provisions in line with the best international practice.

Please find below the most important and major amendments made by the Law to the antimonopoly legislation and, inter alia, to the Entrepreneurship Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan dated 29 October 2015, No. 375-V (the Code).

Antimonopoly authority

The Code has been amended by a separate chapter devoted to the antimonopoly authority. The said chapter spells out the objectives and competence of the antimonopoly authority, addresses the interaction between the antimonopoly authority and other authorities, including, but not limited to, the law-enforcement authorities of the RK, and also states clearly the rights of employees of the antimonopoly authority. For instance, the understanding and full awareness of the competence and rights of the antimonopoly authority's employees will allow you to respond correctly to any inquiry and/or action thereof during investigations. Monopoly activities

The approach has been changed as to the application of prohibitions in respect of anticompetitive agreements. In particular, the amendments relate to the mitigation of prohibitions established by the Code. However, there is no absolute exception as from now in respect of anticompetitive agreements on transfer of intellectual property rights (e.g., if an agreement on exclusive rights to items of intellectual property leads or may lead to the restriction or elimination of competition, such agreement could also become a subject of prohibitions imposed by the Code.) The approach has been changed as to the calculation of an aggregate share of market entities in the commodity market, which should not exceed 20%, when analyzing exceptions applicable to vertical agreements. A share of market entities is now assessed separately by each commodity market in question. The...