*No new space for chains with more than $30 million turnover
*Chains with high market share also barred from expanding
*Anti-monopoly agency does not advocate turnover limits
(Adds comment from retailers' anti-monopoly regulator)
By Maria Kiselyova and Maria Plis
MOSCOW, July 16 (Reuters) - Russia's government, which came to the aid of top food retailers in hopes they would mop up weak rivals in the financial crisis, is now putting the brakes on growth in a new draft law, a copy of the bill showed on Thursday.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin paid a surprise visit last month to a supermarket run by Russia's largest retail chain and scolded its management for charging too much for meat and sausage. The chain immediately announced a "grand sale".
Russians' purchasing power slumped in the country's first recession in a decade, which saw the rouble devalued, unemployment spike to 10 percent and real wages decline. Putin's government is keen to avoid public outrage at economic decline.
The bill stipulates food retailers with annual sales of more than 1 billion roubles ($31.21 million) or market share of more than 25 percent in Moscow, St Petersburg, or any given city district, cannot buy or lease additional trade space.
Yevgeny Fyodorov, head of the Duma Committee for Economic Policies, told Reuters by telephone that the amendment was explicitly intended to rein in national retail chains.
"It is always better to have ten small Gazproms than one big one," Fyodorov said, referring to the powerful Russian state gas export monopoly.
"The sector must develop ... but it does not mean that we should have one chain for the entire country," he said.
He said the draft law, submitted to the Duma lower house of parliament on Thursday, received government backing on Monday.
It was unclear how the bill would affect Wal-Mart, Carrefour and other aspirants to Russia's retail market, one of the fastest growing in the world until the crisis and still lacking in modern, Western style shops.
Earlier versions of the bill were based on industry consultations between suppliers and food retailers, who escaped outright price controls in the draft.
Timofei Nizhegorodtsev, in charge of retail trade controls at the Anti-Monopoly Agency, said it had not advocated limits based on annual turnover.
"The point ... is to limit food retailers' operations in specific city districts where their market share already exceeds 25 percent," he said, adding that turnover-based limits required closer study.
X5, MAGNIT PROTEST
The chief executives of Russia's two top food retailers, who have managed to staunch sales declines by opening new stores this year, decried the unexpected amendment to the bill and said they expected it would be changed during debate in parliament.
Lev Khasis, the chief executive officer of Russia's largest grocer by sales, X5 Retail Group, said the amendments were absurd.
"They are so absurd that I hope that the government will adjust them in accordance with common sense," he told Reuters.
"It cannot be that they forbid us to open new stores and develop. The whole sense of the business is getting lost. It will hit the investment appeal of the retail business," Sergei Galitski, the CEO of Magnit, said.
X5 and Magnit, which is Russia's largest grocery chain by number of stores, had sales of about $9 billion and more than $5 billion respectively in 2008.
They received a combined total of roughly 11.5 billion roubles in state bank loans and credit lines to help cope with the crisis. (Writing by Melissa Akin and Maria Kiselyova; Editing by Rupert Winchester) ($1=32.04 Rouble)