Six depositories excluded from list of monopoly enterprises

The State Demonopolization Committee noted that Bukhoro Vaqt LLC, Jizzakh Vaqt LLC, Navoi subsidiary of National Depository Vaqt, Namangan Vaqt LLC, Samarqand Vaqt LLC and Ferghana Vaqt LLC were included to the State Registrar of Economic Entities, holding dominant position in goods market, in their regions.

The committee said that it received conclusion of the Central Depository on determining borders of service market by regions and the country as a whole, to receive objective assessment of current state of depository services.

The conclusion said that currently many regional investors (owners of shares and stocks of business entities) are clients of depositories, located in Tashkent city, as they possess better material base and more skilled specialists, as well as offer wide range of services. Tashkent-based depositories also combine depository activity with other professional activities in securities market.

Currently, location of service consumer does not play key role in selection of service supplier due to development of information communication technologies and opportunity to approve document with e-signature.

Taking into account this, Central Depository recommended to determine border of depository service market in boundary of Uzbekistan. Inexistence of regional boundaries of this service market allows users to select depository service provider from large number of organizations. This helps to develop competition and pushes depositories to expend range of offered services. This, in its turn, will decrease the cost of services.

Aggregate volume of provided services of depositories in Uzbekistan made up 2.445 billion soums in 2009 and 1.45 billion soums in the first half of 2010. At the same time, share of each depository did not reach 35% within the national boundary.

Taking into account this, all six depositories were excluded from the State Registrar of Economic Entities, holding dominant position in goods market.