Some public procurement procedures will take no longer than a few hours – according to the amendment to the public procurement law made by the Interior Ministry. They should be facilitated by a permanent auction, a so-called electronic marketplace. Interior Minister Robert Kaliňák presented plans for the new rules at a press conference on Monday, July 30.
The electronic marketplace should work as a permanently updated online auction. Firms will be able to register at a special portal where they will state the field of procurement in which they want to provide services. If the procurer chooses the offer of a firm, it will be marked as "preliminarily accepted." Other firms in the same field of procurement will be informed and if no other company makes a better offer within 24 hours, then the procurer will be free to definitively approve the order.
Kaliňák said, as quoted by the SITA newswire, that this method of procurement is especially convenient for regions. The electronic marketplace will also serve for so-called below-limit orders earning tens and hundreds or thousands of euros. The electronic marketplace is one of the 15 points in the working draft of the ministry that should accelerate procurement and make it more transparent.
Other provisions include a ban on the use of the public procurement method of negotiated procedure without a contract notice. After the law comes into effect, it will not be possible to procure anything without the public knowing about it, Kaliňák said. His ministry also proposes in the draft to ban any addendums to already concluded contracts. The court should decide on the entitlement to a supplement, according to new rules. The draft also includes a new rule whereby the most economically advantageous bids, or “strategic bids”, are no longer to be determined by the current criteria.
The daily Sme wrote in its Tuesday, July 31, issue that the Aliancia Fair-Play transparency watchdog finds this way the least transparent, enabling the state to allocate orders over €10 million through special tenders. Unlike the current regulation, by which bidders for the second round are chosen according to objective criteria, the “special tender” would depend fully on the judgment of individual officials, Aliancia Fair Play’s Peter Kunder told Sme. Head of the Transparency International Gabriel Šípoš sees no reason for bigger orders to have different conditions than the smaller ones.
(Source: SITA, Sme)
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
