A Room for Legislation Changes toward Enhancing the Public Procurement in Macedonia

Skopje, 18 October - Participants at a conference on public procurement, which was held Thursday in Skopje in organization of the Center for Civil Communications, jointly concluded that there is a need and a room for amendments to the legislation on public procurement in the country in order to reduce the abuse in the spending of public money.

Basis for discussion were the findings of the monitoring of public procurement in Macedonia (.pdf) where the main weaknesses were detected in the process of procurement, such as reducing the interest of companies to participate in tenders, frequent cancellation of procedures, use of disputed items in selecting the winning bid, favoritism by defining the tender documents, etc..

The President of GRECO (Group of states against corruption within the Council of Europe), Drago Kos shared the Slovenian experience in this area and offered several measures to reduce corruption in the public procurement undertaken in other EU countries, including the insertion of an anti-corruption clause in any contract for procurement of more than 10,000 euros and an obligation for assets declaration for all persons in contracting authorities involved in public procurement.

Some participants called for the prediction of punitive provisions in the Law on Public Procurement.

The Director of the Bureau for Public Procurement, Mare Bogeva Micovska presented the efforts of the institution to enhance the public procurement system and the planned introduction of a special module on prevention of corruption in the trainings conducted by the Bureau.

More than 60 participants attended the conference, among which representatives of all stakeholders in the public procurement, as well as domestic and foreign experts, and representatives of domestic and foreign institutions and organizations.

 

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