site.btaOver 25% of Public Procurement Procedures Have Single Bidder

Bulgaria has to overcome two negative trends which puts it in the lead among 30 European countries in the terms of public procurement fraud and are indicators of possible abuse of public funds, Public Procurement Agency Executive Director Georgi Nikolov said in a BTA interview. It refers to the high percentage of unannounced procedures (Bulgaria ranks first) and procedures with a single bidder (10th place). According to European Commission data about 2020, unannounced tenders accounted for 29 per cent of all public procurement tenders in the country and 26 per cent of tenders were with one bidder compared with an European average 9% and 24% respectively. The data are published in the Official Journal of the European Union for 2020, Nikolov recalled.

These negative trends give rise to suspicions about lack of competition or cartelization of the market in certain industries, introducing too stringent criteria which hamper competition, unlawful elimination of participants in the competitions and or lack of professionalism among those who award the procedures, said Nikolov.

The overcoming of these problems has to do with the terms under which Bulgaria may tap funding for projects under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, he added.

In connection with that an analysis of the market of public procurement in the country between 2019-2021 has been done, its findings will be summarized and used for legislative changes and methodical recommendations. The aim is to identify the reasons for the high percentage of unannounced tenders and tenders with one bidder.

According to Nikolov, the existing Public Procurement Act does not pose prerequisites for corruption and the problems arise from its implementation by contractors and the lack of serious control. However, it needs to be amended and to this end the Finance Ministry has prepared amendments, said Nikolov.

The bill will introduce a mandatory pre-ante control for all public procurement tenders worth over 5 million leva. Another proposal is to ask for an auditor's opinion. To improve control in public procurement tenders over the EU limits the Finance Minister will be able to appoint external experts on the evaluation commission.