Today we organized the meeting with public procurement officers. This meeting was the follow up of the research on the attitudes of the contracting authorities and bidders about the risk for corruption in the public procurement procedure. In the first phase of the research, the public procurement officers have been submitting their remarks and suggestion, responding to the questionnaire made by the Research team of the Institute Alternative, which was sent to them via email. The first results of the research were presented on today’s meeting.
According to the answers, public procurement officers think that these are the key problems faced during the implementing the Law:
- The legal possibility of filing the complaint during all phases of the procurement procedure, as well as the annulment of the procedure by the State Commission due to inadequately prepared tender documentation,
- Incompetency of the Commission for Bid Opening and Evaluation which only formally performs the opening and closing the bid, while all the work is done by the public procurement official,
- The public procurement official is forced to remind the leadership of the institution to the Law, sometimes even in written form,
- Non-compliance of the bylaws with the Law on public procurement,
- Contradictory opinions of Public Procurement Directorate and the Commission for the control of public procurement procedures on the topic of interpretation of specific legal norms in the Law
- Lack of information about all direct agreements contracted within one organ.
The research is conducted within the project “Civil Society and Citizens against Corruption in Public Procurement”, which is implemented by the Institute Alternative with the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of Netherlands. The activities aim at strengthening the cooperation between state and non-state actors in the joint efforts in identifying irregularities in public procurement and formulating the recommendations for improvement.
Jovana Marović
Research coordinator
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