WITH DEFICIENCES OF VIEW
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On July 30, the Court of Accounts of the Republic of Moldova (CoARM) examined during an online meeting, the Compliance Audit Report on the public procurement in the system of the Ministry of Finance (MoF) during 2019-2020.
The purpose of the external public audit was to assess the compliance of public procurement within the system of the Ministry of Finance in 2019-2020.
During 2019-2020, the contracting authorities from the system of the Ministry of Finance made public procurements in the total amount of 484.4 million lei, with the organization of 56 open tenders, 49 procedures for requesting price offers, 1908 low value contracts, 49 negotiated procedures without publication of the contract notice.
In the total expenditures executed for public procurements, the major share is held by the Customs Service (CS) of 52.4%, followed by the State Tax Service (STS) by 33.2%, the Ministry of Finance - 13.3%, the Financial Inspection – 0.7% and the Public Procurement Agency (PPA) - 0.4%.
Generalizing the findings and conclusions formulated, the external public audit attests to a series of non-compliances and deficiencies admitted by the audited entities:
the estimated estimated value of public procurements was increased at the time of launching the procedure by CS to 11 procurements by 3.6 million lei and decreased by SFS to 15 procurements by 4.8 million lei, which indicates some shortcomings in procurement planning and misinformation of tenderers;
non-regular publication of the changes of the procurement plans, thus reducing the broad participation of economic operators in procurement procedures, which limits the transparency of procurement;
the insufficient study of the market conditioned the cancellation of 2 acquisitions, not being capitalized financial means for the purchase of goods and the expected works in the amount of 135.5 million lei;
the deficiencies in the process of identifying and planning the needs within the STS and CS generated additional expenses in the amount of 0.4 million lei;
planning and initiating public procurement procedures amounting to 4.3 million lei within the CS and 1.2 million lei within the STS in the absence of financial means.
Also, the audit shows that the notices of intent regarding the public procurements expected by STS for 15 procurements amounting to 115.8 million lei were not published regularly, by the CS for 6 procurements amounting to 14.7 million lei and to MoF for 2 acquisitions worth 1.9 million lei.
the acquisition of goods and services through the negotiation procedure, which did not correspond exactly to the legal criteria, thus not being organized: by CS - 1 competitive procedure in the amount of 0.4 million lei, by the STS - 3 procedures in the amount of 1, 8 million lei and by the MoF - 1 procedure in the amount of 1.4 million lei;
some normative discrepancies regarding the acquisition by the STS and the CS of the standardized forms of primary documents with special regime through the procedure of direct negotiation from an institution subordinated to the MoF;
cases of establishing in the documentation the award of restricted terms regarding the execution of contracts, which led to the non-valorization of the means and the non-acquisition of the goods;
failure to publish the award notices without withholding the performance guarantee and inadequate documentation of changes to the contract.
With regard to the fulfillment of responsibilities by the competent authorities with functions of regulation, supervision and control of public procurement, the audit notes that the PPA as a single, independent and qualified body in the field of public procurement was established in order to strengthen the capacity of contracting authorities and develop business environment skills. PPA aims to monitor the compliance of public procurement procedures, as well as to perform the analysis of the public procurement system. In this regard, the external public audit reports that:
starting 2017, the PPA has been reorganized, excluding the preventive attributions of ex-ante control of procurement procedures, therefore, it no longer verifies the documentation in procurement, starting with the initiation stage and until the award of the contract, prepared by the contracting authorities, the responsibility for their correctness being exclusively assigned to the contracting authorities;
since 2018, the PPA no longer performs ex-post controls, but only monitors the compliance of the public procurement procedures and performs the analysis of the public procurement system;
PPA has limited access to the documents related to the offers of economic operators submitted through the Automated Information System (State Register of Public Procurement (AIS "RSAP") (MTender)), as well as other information/documents related to the process of examination, evaluation and comparison of offers ;
There is a significant reduction in the number of staff in the PPA. Thus, the limit staff has decreased from 64 staff units in 2017 to 25 staff units in 2020. Therefore, 25 employees of the PPA are to perform 13 duties provided by Law no. 131/2015 on public procurement.
Concerning the AIS "RSAP" (MTender), the audit reveals the following:
In order to achieve the provisions of the Law on Public Procurement, the Technical Concept of the AIS "RSAP" (MTender) was approved throughout the Government’s Decision no. 705 from 11.07.2018. The external public audit found that the AIS “RSAP” (MTender) does not correspond exactly to the requirements of the legislation in the field, as some functionalities of the given system are not developed;
the Regulation on the Methodology for calculating and applying tariffs for the use of the AIS "RSAP" (MTender) has not been developed;
no electronic procurement platform within the AIS "RSAP" (MTender) has been accredited. It is also mentioned that the system is launched and used in experimental operation, no term of use is specified in this regime, it does not offer full and secure functionality at all stages of the acquisition process and there is no User's Guide.
The Court of Accounts concludes that the public procurement process within the system of the Ministry of Finance in 2019-2020 was affected by some irregularities and deficiencies, being conditioned, to a large extent, by the degree of internal managerial control over public procurement processes and insufficient knowledge of some members of the working groups caused deviations at the stage of initiating and conducting public procurement procedures, as well as in awarding and monitoring the execution of contracts. At the same time, the audit denotes incomplete monitoring by the body responsible for administering public procurement of the legality of the actions taken by the contracting authorities or their omissions. The electronic public procurement system AIS "RSAP" (MTender) does not correspond exactly to the requirements of the legislation in the field, not developing some functionalities, which creates difficulties in the activity of contracting authorities initiating public procurement procedures, as well as competent entities with monitoring and control functions on procurement.
