Today, September 21, 2022, the Center for Civil Communications (CCC) published the Report from the regular monitoring of public procurement carried out in the period from July to December 2021, which also includes findings from the survey of companies about their experience in participating in the procedures for public procurement, analysis of the procedures before the State Commission for Public Procurement Complaints for 2021 and research of the contracting authorities on their personnel capacities for public procurement.

KEY FINDINGS

Public procurement and organization of competitive procedures under crisis conditions

This policy brief aims to provide a summary of experiences and to propose possible solutions aimed at improving the legislation and practices related to public procurement under crisis circumstances. On one side, the system should be sufficiently flexible to adjust to any contingencies that might arise during a crisis, but on the other hand, it should ensure maximum level of lawfulness, transparency and accountability, thereby reducing possibilities for abuses.

In 2022, average active transparency of the government, line ministries and municipalities stands at 73% (from maximum possible 100%). Compared to last year’s score, active transparency of analysed institutions has improved by 10 percentile points (from 63% to 73%). This year, high 81% of analysed institutions improved their transparency.

Active transparency among ministries and the government stands at 85%, while municipalities’ average score is 70%. Unlike last year, ministries demonstrate an improvement by 6 percentile points, while improvement among municipalities accounts for 10 percentile points.

Two institutions, i.e. Ministry of Defence and the Government, have earned a perfect score of maximum 100%, which means they publish all information required under active transparency obligations.

Three municipalities share the third position under the overall ranking list with high compliance rate of 97% with active transparency obligations, those being: Bitola, Valandovo and Karposh.

Among planning regions, the Southeast Region climbed to the top position (with a score of 84%), while the Skopje Region still holds the bottom rank (with a score of 56%).

Ministries and municipalities both publish the least information on finances (only 56% from maximum 100% among municipalities and 82% from maximum 100% among ministries).

As regards freedom of information requests addressed to all institutions in the same day and with identical inquiries, the average response rate among municipalities accounts for 12 days (last year it was 17 days), while ministries disclosed information requested within an average period of 16 days (same as last year). High 93% of analysed institutions responded within the law-stipulated maximum deadline of 20 days.

High corruption risks and conflict of interests in COVID-19 procurements persist almost two years after the health crisis’ onset

Today, 10 August 2022, the Center for Civil Communications published its Report on Public Procurements Related to COVID-19 Protection developed on the basis of in-depth monitoring of tender procedures for procurement of goods, services and works whose contracts were awareded in the second half of 2021.

The monitоring detected several key problems and corruption risks, as follows:

• In the second half of 2021 and more than one year after the onset of the health crisis, public procurements related to COVID-19 are still plagued by problems and corruption risks.
• Estimated values of procurements continue to be set in amounts higher than prices attained at tender procedures, which might indicate to risks of purposeful action to create space for awarding contracts at higher prices and to afford corruptive dealings.
• Without any exceptions, in the cases marked by one bidder or one qualified bidder after elimination of other bids during the evaluation stage, bided prices match or are very close to the procurement’s estimated value that has not been published, which refers to previous illegal arrangements between institutions and bidding companies.
• The monitoring continues to observe high differences in price for same products procured in the same time period, ranging up to 500%.
• In the case when reagents are procured, there is long-standing dependence from the company whose testing apparatus is used by the concerned institution, which implies a risk of paying higher prices for reagents and opportunity for corruption.
• Poor supporting documents are available for already non-transparent negotiating procedures without previously announced call for bids.
• Engagement of external associates and companies for implementation of public procurements related to COVID-19 carries an inherently high risk for conflict of interests and corruption.
• Products that cannot be correlated to the coronavirus have been purchased as public procurements related to COVID-19, for example, passenger vehicle for business purposes with leather steering wheel, six speakers and metallic in colour.