Macedonia's Public Procurements 'Suspicious'

Often the commissions delay or annul  tenders, draw up highly subjective criteria and fail to adequately explain their decisions, the Center for Civil Communications, CCC, an NGO noted in its survey for the last quarter of 2009.

“In some cases, many elements of the tendering procedure lead to a suspicion that there is scheming or undue favour of some bidders”, Vanja Mihajlova from CCC told a press conference on Tuesday.

Unlike last year when only one ministry failed to submit report for it’s so called small procurements, (up to €50.000), this year five ministries did not disclose data.

CCC notes that these reports which, according to the law, should be submitted every six months to the State Bureau for Public Procurements are the only effective way to control the spending of  some €26 million spent from these budgets this year.

“The current law on public procurements leaves too much room for manouvre and offers no available sanctions against the state commissions that conduct the tenders” Miroslav Stojanovski from CCC explains.

He stressed the urgent necessity for amendments to the current legislation to fill in this void.

Another problem noted in the survey is the relatively large number of annulled and delayed procedures which again lead to suspicions over their probity.

Of 40 public procurements reviewed in the last quarter of 2009, some 33 percent of the decisions on the best bidder were postponed for between 50 and 120 days. This not only casts a stain on the procedure but also creates problems for the companies that make bids, CCC says.

The percentage of tenders annulled stands at 18 per cent has reduced from the 25 per cent figure from the previous quarter.

Particularly worrying, CCC notes is that in many tenders, quality or performance standards are not part of the terms of the tenders. Most strikingly this applies to  tenders for procurement of medicines and food where the primary criterion is price.

Some bids are evaluated in a highly subjective way, CCC says, particularly when one of the terms of the tender is an evaluation by a specially appointed commission.