One of the reasons for lackluster business competition on below-threshold procurement are frequent dubious disqualifications. Another reason is that the State Audit Service of Ukraine and the Department of Economic Protection of the National Police have failed to provide efficient procurement monitoring. Viktor Nestulia, Director of the Innovative Projects Program at Transparency International Ukraine, conducted a media breakfast titled: “Tenders 2017: How Below-threshold Procurement Will Be Changed”.
According to Nestulia, 4500 procurements are announced every day via ProZorro, 3500 of them are threshold procurements, and of those 2500 are noncompetitive. At the same time, competition for below-threshold procurement business competition remains at a very low-level.
“Businessmen don’t want to bid on the below-threshold procurements anymore, they don’t want to pay money to participate in them, or to waste their time as they know they can be easily unfairly disqualified,” says Viktor Nestulia.
In his opinion, the solution is to cover the below-threshold procurements under the Law of Ukraine “On Public Procurement”. Furthermore, it is necessary to define sound and reasonable threshold levels. If the Law of Ukraine “On Public Procurement” covered below-threshold procurements, the State Audit Service of Ukraine and the Department of Economy Protection of the National Police would monitor the procurements. That would allow them to implement reasonable and responsible limits on business competition for below-threshold procurements.
