In his opening remarks, First Deputy Prime Minister Zubkov said, in part:

There are three issues on our agenda today. First of all, we will review the results of the campaign to monitor food prices and discuss proposals to stabilise them.

Consumer prices for food rose by 0.9% in August and by 0.6% in September. They increased by 5.4% since the beginning of the year. I'd like to note that in the first nine months of the past year prices grew by over 8.1%. The dynamics of the price increases are different in different regions. Generally, retail prices for buckwheat, dairy products, eggs, bread and potatoes have increased significantly. The Federal Antimonopoly Service carried out a series of inspections and found out that suppliers and producers often violate legislation when setting retail prices.

The president and the prime minister are personally supervising this issue. The president instructed the government to set up a commission to monitor the situation in the food market and deal with negative developments there. This commission will monitor price changes. I have been asked to head it.  We are currently finishing up the selection of experts for this commission and developing its statute.

Its main purpose is to find out what causes prices to grow in particular regions. It is necessary to set recommended retail prices, which will allow each member of the chain ‘from the field to the counter' to make reasonable profits, and to ensure that food is available to ordinary people. In addition to this we will work out fair and economically justified pricing policies.

In a follow-up to my directive, a working group was set up in July to prepare guidelines for the government commission. The working group will be attached to the commission.

I am asking the Ministry of Agriculture to finish the drafts of the resolutions necessary to adopt the statute and the list of members of the commission and submit them to the government within seven days.

The second issue of our agenda is the implementation of the law on commerce, in particular its provisions regarding requirements for supply contracts.

Meeting these requirements is important for ensuring the financial stability of agricultural producers, which are facing difficulties following this year's drought. These provisions took effect on August 1. Since then, the Federal Antimonopoly Service conducted 80 inspections of retail chains to find some 7,000 violations of legislation in supply contracts. I'd like to highlight that these violations were found in draft contracts, and this only justifies the introduction of penalties for violating the legislation. In this regard, I am asking the Federal Antimonopoly Service to carry out more inspections, especially unscheduled ones.