BCCI: There cannot be commercial secrets in public procurements

Among the things of utmost importance for business that must be included in the future changes of the Public Procurement Act, is all public procurement information to be computerized. You will hear more often that BCCI wants clear and exact criteria for the rankings under public procurements. The criteria must be clearly specified and a computer system, not committees, should rank the candidates. Then, the fact will be subject to public control.

It was mentioned that the committees are incompetent. According to BCCI, the easiest way to overcome this problem is to include representatives of the respective branch or sector in the committees. Representatives of the sectorial organizations must be included in them, Tsvetan Simeonov was categorical. We don’t mind representatives of international NGOs, such as Transparency International, to be included. Sectorial organizations are organizations of the executors, but in the meantime they are unions of competitors and therefore, it is much harder to hide things from the public attention than in the public institutions. In view of transparency, we would like to see published data about the penalties imposed on executors.

In addition to the while paper of good companies, there should be a “black” list of candidates that have presented documents with false information. This list would be very useful, especially when it comes to spending public money. If we cannot handle the criteria and indicators, we’d better exclude them as factors for the total assessment - for example, the payment terms which are used to systematically break the rules. Due to this indicator and with some internal information it becomes known when the funding will be available. The Chamber has always insisted on clear payment terms which should be known to everyone. The companies should compete according to other criteria or if the criterion for payment terms is included in the classification criteria, there should be obligatory financial security.

Another problem comes with public procurements awarded as an entire order, for which the situation changes with the separate deliveries. For example, a ticket to Korea for the Minister of Labour costs tax payers EUR 17 thousand, while a ticket to the same destination is available for only EUR 700. This was the price offered by a company, which has won the public procurement because of its extremely low prices.

We, at BCCI, often remind that there are much easier ways for verification, such as the ones we use – the standard ISO 9000. This always means at least three offers, if in parallel to awarding the procurement a verification of the offers and prices is conducted.

Among the incentives that must be provided for the business, I will only mention that certified documents are still required to verify circumstances, for which information is in principle stored in the public institutions. Therefore, it must be clearly put in paper that the business shall only declare the fact in question, and the administration shall verify it. Thus, the fees for processing of the documents will also be reduced.

I consider today’s meeting part of everyone’s joint efforts to improve this sphere, Tsvetan Simeonov said. BCCI will grant its support for all positive steps. The involved parties may specify the sanctions for non-execution themselves, which will give a more serious meaning to the entire procedure. If the monitoring and supervisory bodies had done their job, the business wouldn’t have to look for other means of control. As far as disclosure of commercial secrets in public procurements is concerned, BCCI will continue to insist that when public funds are spent, all business information should be available for public verification, and that trade secrets must be reserved to private orders only.