The heads of the competition authorities from the BRICS countries met in Moscow on 21-22 September.

The meeting was organised by the Federal Antimonopoly Service of the Russian Federation, the HSE-Skolkovo Institute of Law and Development and the Finance Ministry.

The meeting was attended by Head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service Igor Artemyev, Commissioner of Brazil's Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE) Mario de Oliveira Junior, Member of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) Madhu Sudan Sahoo, Vice Minister of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) Liu Yuting, Director General of the Price Supervision and Anti-Monopoly Bureau of China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) Zhang Handong, Deputy Director General of the Chinese Ministry of Commerce Han Chunling and Head of the South African Competition Commission Tembinkosi Bonakele.

The participants discussed the forthcoming signing of the Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation of the BRICS countries' competition authorities as part of the IV BRICS International Competition Conference to be held in Durban, South Africa, in November 2015.

The participants also focused on ways to promote cooperation. In particular, the competition authorities' heads agreed to create working groups to address socially important markets, such as pharmaceuticals and food, with an eye towards making competition policies more effective.

Director of the HSE-Skolkovo Institute of Law and Development Alexei Ivanov and its Chief Research Officer and Professor at University College London Ioannis Lianos spoke about a recently-launched pilot project to streamline and regulate the BRICS countries' respective food industries. This project is aimed at developing the best ways to protect competition and removing barriers to market access for small innovation-driven companies from the BRICS countries. In particular, the BRICS countries' competition authorities were asked to create a platform for developing common approaches to anti-monopoly regulation of innovation-driven and socially important markets. The HSE-Skolkovo Institute of Law and Development will act as an operator.

Heads of the competition authorities of the BRICS countries supported the project and highlighted the importance of enlisting the services of independent experts. It was decided to continue to work in this area and, in particular, to include the report drafted by Skolkovo on the agenda of the IV International Competition Conference.