The Commission of Public Procurement (KPP) has announced that the number of contested bids marked an exponential increase last year, signaling that the public institutions have increased the dose of the financial abuses.

“For the period 1 January 2016 – 31 December 2016, there are 1393 recorded and inspected complaints for the public procurements, concessions, mining licenses and bids, or 19.4% more than in the previous year”, KPP announced in the annual report for 2016.

However, the increase of the number of complaints is not the only indicator of increasing abuses with the taxpayers’ money. Another disturbing one is the part of bids, concession or auctions that have been found with violations.

According to KPP, only 40% of the 1393 bids verified last year resulted to be in order, while 60% had serious violations of the law, influencing the final result and also increasing the cost for the citizens.

The violations

KPP has found irregularities in either the activity or inactivity of the contractor authorities and as a consequence has decided the partial or full annulment of the bids.

For a number of cases, KPP has requested the start of administrative investigations from the Agency of Public Procurement.

According to the report, the legal procedures have been violated in 11% of the bids. For those cases, KPP has demanded the annulment. In 41% of the cases, KPP has asked from the contractor authority to make a re-evaluation of the procedure, because of the violations in the evaluation and also during the bids project.

In 8% of the cases, discriminating criteria has been set, in order to favour predefined bidders.

The biggest abusers

The Albanian Post is the most contested institutions for its bids and public procurements, with 85 complaints for 2016.

The Central Tax Administration follows with 35 five contested bids, then the Ministry of Social Welfare and the Power Distribution Operator, with 33 and 29 complaints respectively.

Syri.net