Public procurement complaints reach a new low in 2015, says CNSC

The National Council for Solving Complaints (CNSC) canceled last year the procedures of public procurements amounting to EUR 575.5 million (RON 2.56 billion) and upheld complaints made by companies amounting to EUR 3.3 billion (RON 14.65 billion), according to Mediafax.

CNSC received last year 2,559 complaints made by companies in the procedures for awarding public procurement contracts, of which 429 (16.76 percent) concerned the tender documentation, and 2,130 (83.24 percent) were connected to the outcome of the procedure.

At the same time, 662 (25.87 percent) of the complaints were for public procurement contracts financed from European funds, while 1,897 (74.13 percent) were for contracts funded from internal public funds.

Of the complaints filed last year by companies, 34.7 percent (888) were connected to procurement procedures covering the execution of works, 31.89 percent (816) connected to supplying products and 33.41 percent (855) to services.

“Although the number of complaints made to the CNSC last year have reached a new low since the establishment of the institution, the number of irregularities in the public procurement market has been significant,” reads a statement from CNSC.

The Council upheld 893 (34.77 percent) of cases and rejected 1,675 (65.23 percent).

The institution has issued decisions to award procedures with an estimated value of RON 29.04 billion (EUR 6.53 billion) of which procurement procedures admitted were in the amount of RON 14.65 billion (EUR 3.3 billion) while the total value of proceedings in which the institution issued decisions rejecting appeals was RON 14.39 billion (EUR 3.23 billion).

Thus, of the total value of procedures for which appeals were admitted, the canceled ones amounted to RON 2.56 billion (EUR 576.49 million) and those which were ordered remedial measures totaled RON 12.09 billion (EUR 2.72 billion), “which demonstrates the role of the CNSC as an efficient filter to prevent situations where public money could have been spent inefficiently because of the use by various contracting authorities of exceptions affecting the market transparency of public procurement and creating the potential for corruption”.

Of all the decisions issued last year by the CNSC, 537 (20.91 percent) were appealed. Of these, only 42 were reversed / altered in all instances (1.64 percent of all decisions issued) and only 32 have been partly modified (1.25 percent), so that 2,494 decisions (97.12 percent of all decisions issued) were final and irrevocable.

Since its establishment in September 2006, the Council recorded 53,592 complaints. Of all the decisions relating to those complaints, 47,596 (98.15 percent) remained final and irrevocable, as pronounced by the CNSC.

Natalia Martian

DMCA

PROTECTED