The law was developed in line with the concept of further deepening democratic reforms and forming civil society, which was proposed by the President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov at the joint session of Senate and Legislative Chamber on 12 November 2010.

The law of Uzbekistan “On competition and limiting monopoly activity on goods market” was adopted in 1996 and several its norms do not meet current requirements of the economy.

The law did not control over competition in financial services markets, which did not allow to implement measures on preventing anti-competition actions and actions, limiting competition in this sector.

Similar situation is also observed in regulating trades (tenders) and exchange trades, and antimonopoly bodies participate in these processes without any legal authorities.

The main goal of new law is further regulation of relations in competition and financial markets, and one of main innovations in the law is that antimonopoly regulation now spreads to financial services market.

According to the law, financial market is the sector of financial services, rendered by banks and other credit, insurance and financial organizations, as well as professional participants of securities of the market of Uzbekistan.

The law also divided some terms into separate articles, such as dominant position, group of persons, monopoly high price and monopoly low price, which will ensure single use of them in the legislation.

The document also introduces such new notions as financial service, corresponding markets, state bodies, anti-competition action, coordination of economic activity, agreement, agreed action, etc. This will help to clarify mechanisms and use of the legislation, as well as character of violations.

In particular, if earlier, the economic entity or group of person held 65% or more share in the market, they were acknowledged as dominating position. New law decreases this figure to 50% or more.

In some cases, such as stable share of business entity in the market within a year and relative size of competitors’ share in the market and opportunity of entering new players to the market, the businesses can be acknowledged as holding dominant position if they are share is between 34% and 50% (earlier – 65%).

Separate chapter of the law is dedicated to anti-competition actions. The chapter bans unfair competition and agreed actions, as well as actions and deals of business entities, acts and actions of state bodies, which limit competition.

One of direction of antimonopoly law is to control over deals on purchase of shares of over 35% in charter capital of business entities to prevent monopolization of goods markets.

Agreeing deals, in connection with low threshold of balance cost of the assets, is burdensome process and requires large resources both business entities and antimonopoly bodies. In this connection, the law increases threshold of balance cost of the assets from 4,000 minimal size of salary to 100,000 minimal size.

The document also changes approach on determining monopoly high prices due to development of exchange trades of high liquid goods, including produced by enterprises, holding dominant position of the market. The law said that the price, determined in the result of exchange trades, is not monopoly high.

The law also has separate chapter on antimonopoly regulation of trades (tenders) and exchange trades to ensure effective monopoly regulation trades, ensure transparency and openness of trades. The law introduces changes to authorities of antimonopoly body.