Justice Minister Lucia Žitňanská from the Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKÚ) party lit a single candle on a birthday cake to celebrate the first year of mandatory publication of public-sector contracts on the internet, the SITA newswire reported.
"I am sure that awareness of the fact that every contract will be published and that it can be subject to public criticism creates pressure both on politicians and managers to be more careful what contracts they sign," Žitňanská told a press conference on January 9, as quoted by SITA.
During the first year more than 110,000 state contracts were published on the Central Register of Contracts. Local governments and other institutions publish their contracts on their own websites while more than 4,500 contracts for those municipalities without websites were published in the Commercial Bulletin.
The idea to publish contracts on the internet originated in 2009 according to Žitňanská, who said its impulse was Slovakia’s sale of excess carbon-dioxide emissions at a cut-rate price and the so-called bulletin-board tender. Žitňanská noted that MPs investigating these cases had a problem in accessing the contracts that had been signed by government departments, SITA wrote.
Source: SITA
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
