The Romanian government will create a centralized procurement unit within the Ministry of Finance in order to speed up purchasing procedures and improve spending management, according to a law project published on Tuesday by the Ministry of Finance.
The ministry aims to simplify the legislation to address systemic problems identified during a monitoring process of the government’s procurement system.
The systemic problems include delays caused by ex-ante observers in evaluating bids and designating winners, the high number of appeals, overregulation below mandatory thresholds of acquisitions in European directives, the different opinions issued by the different entities in the system or administrative bottlenecks generated by related legislation.
Another major problem of Romania’s procurement system the non-unitary allocation of resources, the ministry says.
“The establishment of the centralized procurement unit was intended to be achieved by December 31, 2016, as the European Commission requested to set it up and make it operational,” the project points out.
The centralized acquisition unit should become fully functional on January 1, 2019, according to the project.