The Index of Rationality no.18 is developed for the following three types of products:

• school interactive boards;
• pellets with minimum heating capacity of 4.6 kwh/kg and pellets with heating capacity of 4.9 to 5.3 kwh/kg; and
• print paper.

Development of individual indices for these products covered a total of 36 national and local institutions that have organized public procurements for these types of goods in the second half of 2021. For the purpose of obtaining information related to prices of analysed goods and services, as well as their technical characteristics, FOI requests were sent to all contracting authorities whose public procurements are recorded in the Electronic Public Procurement  System. The idea behind the index of rationality for these three types of products is to detect possible differences in price and to help contracting authorities learn about price variations thereof that would allow them to work on improving rationality of their public spending in the future.

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.