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The field of public procurement in the Republic of Moldova is a key field in the management of public finances, therefore the irregularity of public procurement procedures involves major costs for the national public budget.
The extent of an efficient public procurement system is declared as one of the fundamental elements of the development process of the Republic of Moldova. At the same time, the field of public procurement is often subject to major risks.
The audit experience of the previous years has elucidated the maintenance of multiple deficiencies rooted over the years in this area, as well as problems in the development of electronic public procurement. The Court of Accounts of the Republic of Moldova (CoARM) proposed to focus its efforts on auditing this field. Thus, in the Audit Activity Programs of the Court of Accounts for the years 2020 and 2021, 9 audits were included and carried out with the aim of evaluating the compliance of public procurement within the ministries.
Based on the audit findings and conclusions, the Court of Accounts submitted 224 recommendations, aimed at ensuring the improvement of the regulatory framework related to the field of public procurement, maximizing the expected impact from the use of the "MTender" automated system, as well as prospectively avoiding the non-conformities identified within the audits with the aim of making the use of public finances allocated in this sense more efficient. The findings of the audits were the basis for the elaboration of an Analytical Synthesis of the audit results related to the field of public procurement during 2019-2020.
In this context, the Court of Accounts of the Republic of Moldova organized, on December 21, a round table "Sensitive aspects in the field of public procurement, through the prism of the reports of the Court of Accounts". The public event brought together in open discussions the representatives of public entities, such as the Ministry of Finance, the Electronic Government Agency, the Public Procurement Agency, the National Agency for the Resolution of Appeals, as well as civil society organizations, such as IDIS "Viitorul", Expert Group, Transparency International Moldova, the Association Foreign Investors AFI etc.
The findings and recommendations of the Court of Accounts were presented by Petru Rotaru, Member of the CoARM. During the discussions, the participants examined the most sensitive aspects in the field, coming up with solutions and remedial proposals.
A central aspect of the discussions was the issue of low-value purchases. The Court of Accounts found that, in addition to the official figure of public procurement of 9.04 billion lei (4.4% in GDP) made in 2020, the contracting authorities also procured goods, works and services through public procurement of low value , the estimated value of which amounts to 9.01 billion lei. The Court of Accounts found that, in addition to the official figure of public procurement of 9.04 billion lei (4.4% in GDP) made in 2020, the contracting authorities also procured goods, works and services through public procurement of low value, the estimated value of which is 9.01 billion lei. Thus, low-value public procurements have practically equaled the value of competitive public procurement procedures. Most of the authorities do not ensure the conduct of low-value public procurement procedures through the MTender Information System and do not report them to the Public Procurement Agency, for which reason there is no official statistic in the country regarding the actual total amount of public procurements made. The regulatory framework applicable to low-value procurement is ambiguous and incomplete and does not allow monitoring public procurement as a whole. The lacunar regulation of low-value public procurement facilitates the emergence of the risk of fraud.
Also, another important problem is the fact that the "State Register of Public Procurement"/MTender automated information system is fragmented, does not cover 6 procurement procedures out of 8 provided by the legal framework. Also, the Electronic Procurement System is not fully functional according to the approved concept, and in some cases it is not connected according to the provisions of the Public Procurement Law, being limited only to some types of procedures and to a single criterion for qualifying offers. Thus, measures to change the operation of IS are needed at all stages of the procurement process.
Based on the audit findings and conclusions, the Court of Accounts submitted 224 recommendations, aimed at ensuring the improvement of the regulatory framework in the field of public procurement, maximizing the impact of using the MTender IS, as well as avoiding non-compliances in the future. The recommendations and their implementation solutions were also discussed by the participants of the round table.
The objective of the event was to ensure a transparent process of communication of the multiple problems established with all interested parties, as well as the identification of common solutions, aimed at ensuring the compliant and efficient use of public money, including through the exchange of experience and the combination of efforts in the interest of the whole society.
