monitoring of public procurements in bosnia and herzegovina

TOWARDS EFFICIENT PUBLIC PROCUREMENT MECHANISMS IN THE EU

(POTENTIAL) CANDIDATE COUNTRIES

Monitoring of Public Procurements in Bosnia and Herzegovina

- Between EU directives and widespred corruption-

Skopje

Jun 7, 2016

The project is funded by the European Union Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA) Civil Society Facility

www.balkantenderwatch.eu

http://www.balkantenderwatch.eu/



Conducted monitoring in 2015•We covered 17 cases in 10 institutions at all government levels in BiH

– We could not obtain documents in 2 contracting authorities (both from the group of public enterprises)

•Procurement of fuel, computers and cars (in accordance to agreed methodological framework within the Project)•Use of FOI requests•In some cases, we had to intervene and send additional requests to obtain the appropriate documents•However, it was hard to obtain the additional documents that were used to analyze purposefulness

– The analysis was mostly based on publicly available documents and findings from supreme audit institutions



• Some positive changes related to new PP Law (2014)– Better planning (PP plans are now compulsory)– Better transparency in publishing information on PP

• However, many problems remained:– Huge discretion in „interpretation“ of PP plans with lack of uniformity in

their content – Evident discrimination in preparation of tender documents– Lack of accountability within the PP process (no report of obvious

conflict of interests, participation of related parties on tenders, lack of accountability of PP commission within contracting authority, etc.)

– Poor work of main control institutions (Public Procurement Agency, Procurement Review Body, BH Court)

– Lowering competition (discouraging bidders)



• Purposefulness related to public spending in general (and public procurement in particular) is still not at the agenda of decision makers in BiH

• Some interesting questions to raise (based on monitoring):– Why public procurements are based on vague estimations/projections? Is it

an intention or something different?– What are the characteristics that one procured car or computer has to

have? Is it a motor type, length, existence of CD charger, size of trunk, etc.? Why to procure new car or computer?

– How to protect public interest in procurements of fuel? Who set clauses within the contract? Why procurement of fuel is based on fluctuating market price?

– How to prevent irrational procurements ex ante? The supreme audit institutions are working with ex-post consequences…



Findings (derived from the Shadow Report)•Public procurements in BiH are among the biggest sources of corruption in the country

– No real progress related to PP, especially when we talk about prevention of corruption in PP

•Previous amendments to the PP law (and the new PP law) were under influence of EU directives without tackling any observed failures in the implementation of legislation

– The role of EU/SIGMA experts is/was highly questionable

•The application of the PP law is far away from EU practice (in addition, the PP Law is not in line with EU Directives from 2014)•The responsible institutions (PPA and PRB) are not effective related to control/monitoring of public procurements malfunctions •The most “honest” player in improving the PP system is seen in CSOs and part of business community



Recommendations (Shadow Report)•Conduct a comprehensive public consultation in amending the PP Law, changing the current practice in which the public and some stakeholders (e.g. CSOs or business community representatives) are excluded from the process;•Conduct further harmonization with EU Directives from 2014 in connection with public procurement and prevention of conflicts of interest;•Improve the functioning of the PPA;•Improve the transparency of the PPA and PRB by improving their reporting and strict adherence to defined rules for disclosure of information;•Establish closer cooperation between supreme audit institutions and prosecutors' offices through their better coordination;•Improve the work of the Administrative Division of the BH Court in terms of reducing the duration of procedures related to PP cases

monitoring of public procurements in bosnia and herzegovina

Government & Nonprofit