NGO: Third of Tender Procedures Annulled in Macedonia

According to the Centre for Civil Communications, CCC, one third of tendering procedures were cancelled before a contract could be issued to a company during the second quarter of this year.

This marks an increase compared to the same period last year when only one quarter of tendering procedures were cancelled.

The Centre for Civil Communications claimed that the increase in annulled tender procedures indicated that public companies were ignoring official tendering procedures, and said that the number of direct deals taking place were increasing.

In the second quarter of this year, over €12 million of direct deals were made, twice the number of direct deals made last year, the NGO said.

Sabina Fakic from the Centre for Civil Communications told members of the press: “The lack of transparency during direct deals leaves space for subjectivity and is clearly a basis for spreading corruption practices.”

The Centre for Civil Communications is also concerned that only one third of the tenders are done in an electronic way, a practice originally meant to minimise the possibility of misuse.

The Centre further claimed that a lack of transparency in tendering procedures and suspicion of favouritism for one bidder was evident in a number of cases during the study.

Several health institutions were described as having paid five times more for the same type of infusion system. The Centre declined to provide details of the particular health institutions.
 
The Centre has been following Macedonia’s public procurements procedures for almost three years.