Serious infringements detected in 85% of public procurement procedures

Serious infringements were detected in 70% to 85% of public procurement procedures inspected by the Bulgarian National Audit Office (BNAO), announced BNAO Chairman, Professor Valeriy Dimitrov, at the signing of a cooperation agreement with the Commission for Protection of Competition and the Public Financial Inspection Agency (PFIA). The companies involved in competitive tender procedures for different public procurement services have entered into arrangements, thus actually reaching a cartel agreement, stated Dimitrov. Through manipulative fraud actions of such bidders, who fictitiously appeared to be competitors but turned out to be de jure partners, all tenders, as well as public procurement contracts and concessions, become pointless. Taxpayers also pay a higher price than the normal procurement procedure cost, reckoned Dimitrov.

According to PFIA, over the past four years, administrative violations were reported in over 60% of about 5,500 public procurement procedures, emphasised Temenujka Petkova, CEO of the Agency. The value of these procurement contracts was about BGN 5.5 bn. Most inspections were carried out in municipalities. Most frequently, the detected infringements related to restrictive terms and conditions for particular bidders or to those granting advantages to other applicants. Besides, more than 1,000 fraudulent cases were tracked down for unannounced public procurement tenders as a result of which the Bulgarian state lost some BGN 220 mln.

The draft amendments to the Public Procurement Act (PPA) were directed at the introduction of a new mechanism of preliminary control over awarded public procurement contracts. This is aimed at the imposition of stricter regulation of the system, said Minister of EU Funds Management, Tomislav Donchev, quoted by BTA (Bulgarian Telegraph Agency). He also heads the working group for PPA amendments. Monitoring will be carried out by the Public Procurement Agency (PPA). In this way, the current vicious practice of shared responsibility with the managing authorities of operational programmes will be avoided, stated Donchev.

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