REGIONAL DEBATE ON CRITICAL CHALLENGES IN PUBLIC PROCUREMENT IN THE WESTERN BALKAN COUNTRIES

70 representatives of all relevant stakeholders, including government officials, civil society organizations, international partners, and the media gathered together on 25 September 2024 at Balkan Tender Watch’s annual regional debate on state of affairs in public procurement in the Western Balkan countries.

Money well spent?

PUBLIC PROCUREMENT IN THE WESTERN BALKANS

Public procurements or only imitation?

“Monitoring of the public procurements: corruption risks, identified from the civil society organizations” organized by the Macedonian Center for International Cooperation (MCMS) and the Center for Civil Communications (CCC).

Monuments’ polishing will clean up 730,000 euro for two years

The construction company "Beton" will maintain fountains and monuments in the next 24 months.

Public procurement could be next TTIP deal breaker

As EU-US negotiators prepare for a new round of transatlantic trade talks in New York next week, officials fear TTIP might run into a new brick wall: Public procurement.

 
 

Focus

Public procurements – source of corruption in the region

Date: Jun 12, 2016

Macedonia

7.06.2016

Source: Telma TV, 24vesti.mk, tv21.tv 

 

 

 Municipalities and public companies who purchase luxury sports cars, procurements “tailored” only for one company and “acting as a competition”, carelessness of what’s being purchased, how much does it cost and when it will be delivered.

The analysis of the public procurement of the vehicles, petrol and computers in the region shows that in different countries similar methods are used in the procurements as a tool of corruption.

-They go so far as our Ministry of Finance in the process of fuel purchasing in the procurement they added the prefix "eco" which for its fuel it is used only by Hellenic Petroleum, whereas the other oil companies have their own prefixes. Only Hellenic Petroleum participated, received business and supplied over 90 percent of the public administration, without anyone else to participate in the tender, said Montenegrin representative Vuk Maras.

Our Government officials want to buy official cars through catalogues. Specifications from the catalogue are placed in the tender and in any case without competition between various distributors of vehicles. There are always two or three offers from one manufacturer, which means that the tender documentation is made only for one car, said Aleksandar Draganic from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In Macedonia, one of the main problems is the lack of competition. The best example for this is the data that for the last three years, the average number of bidders has decreased from five to two and a half.

-The lack of competition is doing its job. Except for computer equipment, where regularly there are more bidders, for the vehicles for instance there is only one, and only in one of the monitored tenders, there were two bidders. Well, aren’t there many car dealers, aren’t they complaining that they face decrease on sales with the import of the used cars, and then again there is only one bidder, said German Filkov from the Center for Civil Communications.

Organizations of all countries complain about the lack of transparency, especially in the part of the public procurement plans, as well as the details of the realization of contracts.

All this is contrary to the EU recommendations for increasing the efficiency of the public procurement system in the countries aspiring to become its members.

 
Link video in Macedonian: