Open data on results of public opinion survey 2020 can be found here, as well as open data on comparison of results from 2015/17 and 2020
This report provides an overview of the public opinion present in the Montenegrin public concerning the public procurement process. Thus, report also points to any changes in attitudes that may have occurred over the past five years.
When the two survey rounds are compared, the most striking finding is the almost doubled share of the citizens who demonstrate a lack of awareness concerning public procurement. While the share of those who provided no explanation of the term in 2015 was 37%, in 2020 71% of adult population could not define public procurement. The share of citizens who could not distinguish between abuse in high- and low-value procurement in 2020, and the share of citizens who could not specify their level of satisfaction with public procurement review also increased.
Such lack of awareness coincides with the view shared by 60% of the population that the media do not focus sufficiently on the importance of countering public procurement abuse. The same assessment applied to the government policies governing public procurement – 60% of citizens thought them insufficiently inclusive of citizens and insufficiently transparent.
51% of the population believe that abuse is frequent. It is also believed that there is a strong unlawful link between political and economic players. Most citizens believe that public procurement procedures are mainly implemented in an unfair, non-transparent, non-objective and partial manner and that they are guided more by partisan rather than public interests. Given this, one in two citizens of Montenegro are not satisfied with the review that is supposed to prevent abuse.
Finally, almost one-half of the Montenegrin public reported that the situation in the field of public procurement was neither significantly better nor worse, but the same as five years earlier.
