BRATISLAVA, January 28, (WEBNOVINY) – More transparency, higher economic efficiency and protection of the competitors are the goals of changes to the law on public procurement proposed by the coalition. “Our motive as submitters of the amendment was to resolve the negative situation in the field of public procurement, regarding the repeated cases of manipulated procurement,” says the MOST-HID MP Edita Pfundtner.
After long and difficult political and expert discussions the coalition has reached a consensus on the amendment, which is, according to the SaS MP Kamil Krnac even stricter, then they proposed originally. “It regulates the statute, who will be the public procurer and who will be procurer, the range will be extended, some dates regarding publishing the information in the public procurement process were put more exactly. That means for example that the electronization of this process was defined more exactly, so that unnecessary written archives are not created. The amendment’s effectiveness was postponed from originally planned March to April 2011,” Krnac listed some of the changes. The submitters consider it important that the conditions in restricted competition were made stricter, so that instead of the current five ten applicants will have to be addressed.
None of the key elements, which were announced already in November 2010, was omitted in the amendment. “Non-priority services are completely canceled, therefore no bulletin-board tenders will be possible. We significantly reduced the [financial] limits for the duty to announce a tender,” says the coalition SDKU-DS MP Miroslav Beblavy, adding that it still will not be possible to eliminate a competitor because of formal insufficiencies. According to the amendment, all public institutions including public enterprises will have to purchase via tenders with no exceptions possible. “Therefore for example national lottery company] Tipos, which is not a public procurer, will have this status after this draft is approved,” says Beblavy.
All coalition parties agreed upon the draft, thus the Parliament should approve it without any complications.
SITA