The state will not be allowed to purchase goods and services worth millions of euros without competition as Interior Minister Robert Kaliňák has given up on the plan to introduce so-called strategic orders into the amendment to the law on public procurement. The decision came after Kaliňák received a lot of criticism over the issue from his colleagues in government, the Hopodárske Noviny daily reported.
The concept of strategic orders counted with the possibility that the government would have the right to execute major purchases over €10 million without a regular tender in cases that are deemed important for the whole society.
“Strategic orders are not inscribed in the red book for which we could not let them vanish,” Kaliňák said, as quoted by Hospodárske Noviny.
Moreover, the new rules for state purchases should come into effect later, in the first half of October 2013.
Executive director of the Slovak Business Alliance Robert Kicina commented that they “hail the erasure of the paragraph that might have restricted competition and put potential bidders at a disadvantage, while there had been a danger that the state would not have chosen the best bid”, the daily wrote.
Source: Hospodárske Noviny
Compiled by Radka Minarechová from press reports
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