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THE BUSINESS WILL RELY ON MORE TRANSPARENCY IN PUBLIC PROCUREMENTS



 The Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry presented its position in the spirit of the necessary decreasing of the administrative burden and removal of the obstacles before business. We consider that representatives of the Branch Organizations must be included in the evaluation commissions. In that form, the evaluation commissions will also express opinions when an open procedure needs to turn into a negotiated procedure with publication of contract notice (e.g. when the nature of the supply, service or construction works do not permit prior overall pricing; when the nature of the service to be procured is such that the technical specifications cannot be established with sufficient precision; and in other specific cases, as provided in Art. 84 of the Public Procurement Act). This must also be done whenever a shortening of the time limits of a public procurement procedure is needed. 
We proposed that a time limit for payment by the contracting authorities should be regulated, which shall be no longer than 30 calendar days since the date of completion of the object of the public procurement. The time limit for payment can be extended, if this is objectively justified by the specific nature and characteristics of the contract, provided that it doesn’t exceed 60 calendar days. For longer time limits for payment, the written consent of both contracting parties shall be required.
We reckon that it is important to prohibit the contracting authorities to include the “time limit for payment” indicator in the process of evaluation of the economically most favourable offer, because it provides opportunity for unfair elimination of the “inconvenient” participants.
Our proposal is to regulate the keeping of the so-called “black lists” of dishonest companies. According to our members, it is unfair that at the beginning of every public procurement procedure the companies which abide by the rules have equal chances with the companies which relied on additional annexes, after they had won the tender by offering the lowest price or the longest payment terms. Very often such companies get paid much earlier, to the surprise of the other participants in the tender. 
For the same reason, the evaluation cannot rely on arguments such as a guarantee period, which is often determined for … a hundred years. It is more important to secure the broader participation of external organizations in the project proposals evaluation commissions. The fact that representatives of a specific branch will take part as evaluators and will also bear responsibility for their participation before the law will make the procedures more transparent. In this way more data about the companies and the parameters of the public procurement will be entered in the Public Procurement Register. This will allow every company from the respective branch, even if it didn’t took part in the tender, to check the conditions, rules, terms and prices online. This will be cheaper for the country and the municipalities. 
For us the introduction of the regulation for more transparency will save the whole public procurement system from the doubts about backdoor agreements and annexes after the time limits have passed.
We believe that we should no longer rely on fragmentary amendments, because, as we said during the discussion, the more amendments are made to a law, the more the logic changes and often this is at the expense of the transparency, which the business expects.  

11.01.2011

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