FAS accused the Prosveshchenie publishing house of inflating prices for textbooks

The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) has identified signs of monopoly high prices for textbooks being set by the Prosveshchenie publishing house. An antimonopoly case has been initiated against the publishing house, and it faces an administrative fine.

“The service analyzed the income and expenses of the publishing house, financial results, prices and volumes of textbooks sold and identified signs that the publishing house was setting monopolistic high prices for textbooks on history, biology and the Russian language,” says the FAS press release in Telegram.

In September 2023, Chairman of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko called deal with the sharp rise in prices for textbooks and the monopoly of “Enlightenment” on the market. She said that on the eve of the school year, prices for textbooks in the regions increased by one and a half times. “Enlightenment”, in particular, printed Most of the new textbooks on general history and Russian history for 10th and 11th grades, which were presented last year. It was planned to sell them at a price of 849 rubles.

Back in 2016, how wrote “Kommersant”, the Moscow Department of Education recommended that school leaders, when choosing textbooks for grades 1–4, give preference to the Prosveshcheniye publishing house. The publishing house’s share in the capital’s market of educational literature for primary schools increased from 0.23% in 2013 to 93.2% in 2015. In 2020, “Enlightenment” consolidated Occupying about 3% of the market of the publisher “Binom”. The FAS had questions about this deal, which saw in it the danger of eliminating competition in the school literature market.

Forbes reported, that in 2023 Prosveshchenie allocated more than 26.5 billion rubles for dividends. In 2022, Prosveshchenie JSC allocated 9.16 billion rubles for dividends, and in 2021 – 4 billion rubles.

About the situation on the market of paper books in the Russian Federation – in the material “Kommersant” “Paper books have mastered the Internet”.

Laura Keffer