There is Undeniable Progress in the Public Procurement Draft Bill

Speech of Mr. Tsvetan Simeonov before the Economic Policy Committee regarding the first reading of the Draft Bill for Amendment and Supplement to the Public Procurement Act

The Secretary of the Committee distributed in advance our detailed notes and this facilitates my task greatly. I will only briefly accent on several important issues.

There are 10 positions in the Draft Bill on which we consider undeniable progress has been achieved and which I will not list. There are 11 other positions, for which we would like to see our proposals taken into consideration. We reckon it well to include representatives of the NGOs in the evaluation committees awarding public contracts. Secondly, more data should be published on-line for public access.

Our next suggestion is to prevent a certain group of people, who had breached previous public contracts, from applying. I will also underline the need to regulate terms of payment, because, as you know, this is extremely important for a number of companies.

Such a regulation would mean that it would be forbidden for the contracting authorities to include the term of payment as an evaluation criterion. In practice, there are many cases when extremely long terms of payment are defined. This often discourages normal companies which are not related to the contracting authority from participating. In such cases, when a company has connections and contacts with the authority awarding the public contract, it applies regardless of these impossible for the business terms, lists over a year-long term of payment and due to its connections, after winning the contract, gets paid not after a year but after a month or two, thus eliminating the competition. We consider this a harmful practice.

For us it is important that the law regulates the obligation of the contracting authority to make routine check-ups in all state databases. All those facts are declared by the participants when applying, but the contracting authority should conduct the searches officially. Because one printed extract from the Register about a company may be correct today, but the following day the company may go into bankruptcy or liquidation. The later the control of the candidates is made, the better.

Our Position Paper contains 17 objections to proposed amendments to the Public Procurement Act. The motives for our disagreement with the proposed changes are explained and clear alternatives are suggested. We already sent a copy of our Position Paper to Minister Donchev and will present a copy to the Minister of Economy as well.

Thank you for your attention.

07.07.2011