Macedonia Public Procurement Needs Work

Some 40 per cent of state institutions, including some ministries, do not regularly disclose data on their procurements as required by law, according to data collected by local NGO Centre for Civil Communications, CCC.

The revelations were part of the NGO's annual report on the monitoring of the implementation of public procurements for 2009.

A significant 25 per cent of procurements were annulled last year, which points to an increasing trend of making procedural errors, CCC notes.

“Contracting authorities take too long to perform bid assessments and select the most favorable bid which results in unnecessary delays and expenses,” Vanja Mihajlova from CCC told media at Monday’s presentation of the report in Skopje.

Data from the group's report shows that institutions often need up to 90 days to reach their decisions and that in many cases manipulation-prone criteria for the selection of the most favorable bid are used, CCC said.

Companies present at the presentation complained that they often get insufficient explanations from the institutions regarding the reasons why their bids have been refused. They said that some of their appeals, though formally accepted, are not implemented.

As one way to upgrade the procedures, CCC proposes that more of the procurement bidding be conducted electronically. The group says that this would reduce the cost and increase the transparency of the procedures. Currently only 2,5 per cent of all procurements in the state are done this way, the survey shows.

CCC also suggests increased supervision of the procurements, from the start of the bidding to the realisation of the contracts.