“Democracy and openness of tender operations is an important aspect for sustainable development of society and the country's economy, a guarantee of prudent spending of budgetary resources, an element of prevention of possible abuses in public procurement. Appropriate mechanisms have been created in Pridnestrovie, there is a legislative, regulatory and legal framework. There are cases when attempts are made to earn excess profits from the state. Our task is to correct the system in such a way as to exclude any possibility of abuse,” the President noted, opening a working discussion on improving the mechanism of tender procedures.
They talked at the meeting about the measures already taken and what still needs to be done. Work in this direction has been carried out since 2018. It was initiated by Vadim Krasnoselsky. Particular attention was paid today to the issue of public procurement in the housing and public utilities sector and healthcare. According to the Chairman of the PMR Government, an important component of the control measures carried out as part of comprehensive audit of the effectiveness of management activities of enterprises in the housing and communal sector was the verification of implementation of public procurements and tenders. Several problematic aspects inherent to most housing and communal services enterprises were identified, including the splitting of contracts in order to reduce the amount of contract that makes it possible not to hold a tender (with a transaction amount of less than 500 thousand rubles), advance payments (full prepayment) without assessing the financial stability of contractors, unjustified overstocking of warehouses. Measures have already been taken to solve these problems, said Alexander Martynov.
As for healthcare sector, not only specialized departments, but also specialists from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security were involved in the development of a set of measures aimed at increasing the transparency of procurement efficiency. A large amount of analytical work was carried out by the employees of the PMR Accounts Chamber. As a result, now the need of a healthcare facility to purchase various kinds of medical products, as well as to carry out work, is determined by a special commission. Representatives of various departments and government agencies are involved in its work. Tender procedures are carried out in three stages. There is an opportunity to reduce prices during open trades. The notorious closed envelopes are a thing of the past. This practice has been brought to naught on behalf of the President. An obligatory component of the updated tender system is the price examination of contracts. Alexander Martynov gave examples and named specific amounts of savings in public funds due to the introduction of new rules. According to him, approximately seven million rubles were saved in 2019 that were used to purchase medical equipment and three cars for the needs of citizens with special needs. In general, the situation in the field of public procurement through the Ministry of Health has noticeably improved, but there is still work to be done, according to the participants in the meeting under the President.
They talked about the need to hold a tender when concluding additional agreements, about advantages of competition among the developers of design estimates, as well as about responsibility for its content. During the discussion, they focused on the issue of inconsistency of the current price standards for the types of work (they are dated 1984). The issue of a possible transition next year to the resource method for determining the cost (calculation in current or forecast prices) was discussed. The Government is working in this direction. In this regard, Vadim Krasnoselsky noted that this aspect is only an element of a complex multi-link system to be built. Speaking about the deliberate overpricing of materials, the President compared it to fraud, noting that the responsibility should be appropriate. During the discussion, they focused on the topic of a ban on participation in tender procedures for non-residents of the PMR. This restriction was introduced at the initiative of the President. Vadim Krasnoselsky focused on the issue of active involvement of state unitary enterprises and municipal unitary enterprises in tender relations. The procurement law was not left without discussion. Adopted in 2018, it was supposed to come into force with the onset of 2019, but later it was decided to postpone the implementation. As a result, the mechanism prescribed in the document started working only from January 1, 2020, and not fully. Some norms have been revised. Pilot projects have been launched on the basis of a number of ministries and departments. Based on this practice, new roughnesses and flaws were identified. Work continues to eliminate them. It is planned to hold additional working meetings and conferences, including working meetings and conferences under the President.
