10 journalists from local media have been trained in improving their skills in investigating and reporting on public procurements in the country. The trainings included types and procedures of public procurements stipulated in the new Law on public procurement, as well as the public procurement practices, based on the reports from monitoring of the public procurements done by the Center for Civil Communications. In addition, the journalists learnt how to use and search better the electronic system of public procurements in order to acquire necessary information for their reports. Each participant developed his/her own action plan for future investigation in public procurements based on the knowledge, skills and tips acquired during the training. Besides on their host media, the investigative news reports on public procurements will be published in the Monthly anti corruption magazine MAK of the Center for Civil Communications.

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The Center for Civil Communications is implementing an initiative for a greater involvement of the media into investigating and reporting the public procurement in the country, under the “Monitoring of the public procurement project”. Thus, besides the trainings for journalists from nation-wide and local media on enhancing their skills in investigating and reporting on public procurements, an additional support for journalists’ investigations in this direction will be provided.

Therefore, CCC is inviting all interested journalists to fill the Plan for an investigation in the public procurement which can be downloaded here, and to send it us back by email, no later than April 18, 2010. Six best proposals in total, both from national and from local media, will get a financial support to cover the expenses of the research. The awarded journalists will have to broadcast/publish their stories on their host media first. In the same time, the awarded stories will be published in CCC’s monthly anti corruption magazine MAK.

For more details about this call, please call (02) 3213-513 or send us an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Contact person is Elena Ristevska.

10 journalists from national media have been trained in improving their skills in investigating and reporting on public procurements in the country.

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The main conclusion of the CCC’s research of the way media in the country report on corruption became part of the U.S. Department of State’s regular annual Human Rights Report in the world published on March 11, 2009. The Freedom of the Speech and Press section of the report says: The independent media were active and expressed a wide variety of views without restriction. However, several commentaries and editorials on International Press Freedom Day (May 3) noted that pressure from political and business interests was impeding the development of a more independent press. On June 30, the Center for Civil Communications reported that the country's media lacked a professional approach towards reporting on corruption.

The whole report can be found on the following link
CCC’s research on the way Macedonian media reports on corruption can be found on the following link

Center for Civil Communications published the Annual report on public procurement (.pdf) which contains the results of the monitoring process of public procurement in Macedonia, at the conference held on February 22, 2010 in Skopje.

Among other things, the report highlights the ten biggest problems in public procurement in Macedonia and offers expert recommendations for overcoming the weaknesses in the system of public procurement.

The purpose of the monitoring is to assess the conduct of the procurement process in Macedonia within the new law and to detect whether the basic principles of public procurement: transparency, competition, equal treatment of economic operators, non-legality, economical, efficient, effective and rational use of budgetary resources, efforts to get the best offer under the best conditions and accountability for money spent in public procurement. The conference was attended by fifty representatives of institutions and organizations involved in procurement process who expressed their views and opinions on the findings from the monitoring of this important process.

The English version of the report can be downloaded here: Annual report on monitoring the implementation of public procurement (.pdf)