Public policy researcher at Institute Alternative (IA), Ana Đurnić held a meeting today with Assistant Director of Public Procurement Administration (PPA) Mara Bogavac and presented recommendations for improving transparency of public procurement and better reporting in this area.
The meeting was held at the initiative of PPA, regarding our findings from numerous publications and research activities in this area. The aim of the meeting was to improve Annual Report on Public Procurement in Montenegro in 2016, which PPA should prepare and submit to the Government until 31st May this year.
Ana pointed to mistakes both in annual report which PPA prepares and individual reports of contracting authorities, identified through several years of researching and monitoring this area, and presented set of recommendations for improvement.
She once again reminded of a need for submitting individual reports on public procurement in machine readable form and publishing data base excerpts by the PPA, that would enable automatic processing and grouping of data.
In order to provide wider scope of data that could be processed and analysed that way, we also recommended changes of content of forms for annual reporting on conducted public procurement of contracted authorities. These changes should be considered in the context and procedure of harmonisation of by-laws with the new Public Procurement Law which is currently being prepared.
So, among amounts and lists of conducted procurement, forms for annual reportingshould also include the following:
- Information on concluded annexes and explanation for changing conditions of the original contract;
- Amount of planed and spent budget for public procurement;
- Number of adopted amendments on public procurement plan;
- Reasons for amending the public procurement plan;
Information on extending the deadline for submitting offers for each procurement; - Amount of planed and spent budget for public procurement;
- Number of adopted amendments on public procurement plan;
- Reasons for amending the public procurement plan;
- Information on extending the deadline for submitting offers for each procurement;
- Reasons for shortening the deadline for submitting offers for each procurement;
- Information on changing tender documentation.
We also recommended to the PPA to publish on their website all the request for concluding Contracts for amending the original contracts on public procurement (annexes), as well as their decisions upon submitted requests, bearing in mind that conclusion of such contracts requires consent of the PPA.
Regarding existing content, the Annual Report on Public Procurement should also contain following information:
- Number of annexes concluded annually, for which the PPA gave its consent, contracting authorities and amounts of concluded amendments of the original contract (in spreadsheet)
- Total number and list of all contracting authorities that failed to submit annual report on public procurement within legally prescribed deadline – until the end of February;
- Total number and list of all contracting authorities that violated allowed percentage of use of direct agreement and the percentage of use of direct agreement;
- List of all contracting authorities which did not correctly presented data on conducted procurement;
- List of all contracting authorities that are not submitting reports on public procurementcontinuously;
- Total number of contracting authorities with discrepancies in the amounts of planned and spent budget for public procurement, with the amount of planned and spent budget, as well as difference between those two, for each contracting authority with discrepancies;
- Total number of contracting authorities which amended public procurement plans and contracting authorities with the highest number of adopted amendments along with the number of adopted amendments;
- Data on misdemeanour liability for violations of the Law noted in PPA’s reports;
- Total number of tenders when only one bid is submitted, list of contracting authorities and subject of the contract;
- Total number of tenders with more than one bid submitted, but all than one were excluded as irregular;
