Some of the key findings are:
Almost one third of tender procedures from the monitoring sample have been completed with awarding the procurement contract to the single bidding company that participated therein. In such cases, the tender procedure is not completed with the organization of electronic competition for reduction of initially bided prices, i.e. with the so-called e-auction. On the account of this, tender procedures with one bidding company that has been awarded the contract imply a major risk of signing the procurement contract under prices higher than the actual market prices. Namely, there is an unwritten rule whereby the bidding companies indicate higher prices for their products, services or work performance in expectation of having these prices reduced during the downward bidding (e-auction). Although planned, e-auctions were not organized in half of tender procedures from the monitoring sample.
Some contracting authorities continue to use bid-evaluation elements that do not guarantee objective selection of the most favourable bid. Cases have been noted where the contracting authorities allocated points to the bidding companies with whom they have signed procurement contracts in the past and lack clear methodology on point-ranking of the quality element, which ultimately increase the risk of subjective selection of the most favourable bid.
In the period July-September 2013, total amount of public funds spent by means of negotiation procedures without previously announced call for bids has increased by 52% compared to the same period last year. In this reporting period, the value of contracts signed by means of this non-transparent procedure amounts to 21.3 million EUR. In accumulative terms, procurement contracts signed in this manner in the first 9 months of 2013 amount to a total of 47.4 million EUR.
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For more information, please contact the Center for Civil Communications at (02) 3213-513 or at center@ccc.org.mk.
This report is made possible by the support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) within the USAID Civil Society Project.