24 November 2015, 11:56
Committee chairperson Andrii Ivanchuk said the following during the discussions: "Pursuing the necessity of higher efficiency of the use of public finance and the necessity of bringing the procedures of state procurements closer to requirements of the World Trade Organization, it is important today that we consider all proposals, including those submitted by the society and international experts, for defining the legal base for reforms in the field of state procurements."
Authors of the new draft law "On public procurements" believe that the base for shifting to the full-scale reform in the field of state procurements should become the transfer of all state tenders to the on-line format in 2016.
"The transition to on-line procurements should not be considered as panacea. This is not a magic solution of problems. However, this is an important step and the other reforms cannot be carried out without this step," said Maksym Nefiodov, Deputy Minister for Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine.
According to representatives of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, the pilot project of on-line system of pre-threshold auctions ProZorro, which started in February 2015, has yielded excellent results.
To date, close to 1,800 state customers have joined the pilot project and the system has included nearly 25,000 tenders.
The draft law on "Public procurements" presented by the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade envisages:
- introduction of compulsory procedures through the on-line system. At the first stage the obligation of holding the procedures through the on-line system addresses major budget holders and monopolists (from April 1, 2016), and all customers at the second stage (from August 1);
- introduction of on-line auctions, which envisages automatic estimation of tender bids;
- definition of new notions "authorized on-line ground," "in-line procurement system," "centralized procurement organization," "system of cloud computing";
- leaving three procedures instead of five (open auctions, competitive dialogue, negotiating procedure");
- essential change of terminology. In particular, the term "state procurement" will be replaced by the term "public procurement". The terms "competition," "documentation of competitive auctions," "bid of competitive auctions," "the committee of competitive auctions," will be replaced by terms "tender", "tender documentation," "tender bid," "tender committee."
Following the discussions of the draft law "on public procurements" the roundtable participants defined a circle of vital questions that need further painstaking work.
The comprehensive discussion of the draft law in the Committee with participation of all stakeholders proved very effective. The discussion defined major issues that need finalization before submission of the draft law to the Verkhovna Rada for voting.
Following the roundtable Andrii Ivanchuk suggested further work at the document to get official stances of the government officials on questions raised during the roundtable and to check the question of the correlation of the suggested amendments with the European legislation.