Effective use of public money and minimizing the risk of authorities requires the application of competitive and transparent public procurement procedures, as well as the use of criteria that reflect the economic benefits of bids in order to obtain the best value for money - was one of the topics discussed in the training in public procurement involving 30 contracting authorities and economic operators. The workshop took place within the framework of the project "Innovative Improvements in the Public Procurement System of the Republic of Moldova through Inclusion, Creativity and Law Enforcement Practices" funded by the European Union and co-financed by the Hanns Seidel - Republic of Moldova Foundation.
Public procurement planning is the first step in designing and carrying out procurement procedures for delivering goods, providing services or executing required works. The planning stage is important because it influences the entire procurement process. Inappropriate planning contributes to increasing the risk of experiencing difficulties, canceling the procurement procedure or making various changes to the procurement contract. Incorrect planning also contributes to the inefficient use of public money and violation of the principles.
"Ensuring competition and combating unfair competition in the field of public procurement is the principle requiring competition conditions to be ensured so that any economic operator with a qualification and offer adequate to the real need of the authority can participate in the award procedure and have equal opportunity to be nominated winner. Contracting authorities are expected to provide an adequate competition framework and to play an active role in combating anti-competitive practices by reporting to competent bodies ", said Vadim Turcan, Valdconsgrup's procurement specialist.
Vadim Jeleascov, the manager of the achiziţii.md platform presented the advantages of the e-procurement system to the workshop participants. It is the exclusion of corruption and the possibility of choosing the winner by the contracting authority. There are more economies of enormous amounts of money to digitize the procurement system.
Businesses were interested in the electronic procurement system, as the results of the auction, the contract, and the contract changes are available online. Companies can place their offer without leaving the office and in real time they can participate online at the auction.
For further details, please contact the press officer, Victor URSU, at the following address: ursu.victoor@gmail.com or at 069017396.
If in the five years since the appearance of the bank card (1997) in Moldova the financial turnover was insignificant after ten years, the volume of operations reached 8 billion lei. Mostly, it was used as a means of removing money from the ATM. But in the last three years, there is an increase in geometric progression by 50%, annually, of card payments. Thus, if in 2015 payments with the card amounted to 2.3 billion lei, in 2016 - 3.3 billion lei, then this year we are approaching 5 billion lei. Increasing card payments will reduce the informal economy. This is the opinion expressed by the IDIS Viitorul economist Veaceslav Ioniţă during the "15 minutes of economic realism" show.
In 20 years, the number of card payments amounted to 15.6 billion lei, of which more than half were made in 2016, 2017. One of the hypotheses is the liberalization of the visa regime which has led to the intensification of travels in Europe where Moldovans have learned that it is very easy to make the card payments.
Although there is an exponential increase in electronic payments, they remain at a fairly low level compared to those in the EU where the share is 20%. If the pace of growth is maintained then within five years the Republic of Moldova will reach the European average.
"This year, Moldovans will pay for goods and services in cash in the amount of 110 billion lei, and the payments with the card will reach 4%. There are still 25 billion ROL - the unseen economy, the payments people make when they go to the market. Moreover, this year, Moldovans will withdraw 40 billion lei from ATMs, if this money would have been used to pay for goods and services then banks would charge fees equivalent to 800 million lei. But the citizens' tradition of cashing out and cashing in and making cash payments causes bank failures", said Ionita.
At the same time, banks will collect from the agents 100 million lei from the payments that Moldovans pay with the card due to the average commission of 2% that the business has to pay for electronic payments.
In conclusion, the economist IDIS Viitorul said that the state would also benefit from card payments because it would reduce the informal economy. The authorities would see all the transactions that took place. Currently, the informal economy has a share of 17.8% compared to 19.6% in 2014.
The show is made by IDIS "Viitorul" in partnership with Radio Free Europe.
For more details, contact the Public Relations Coordinator IDIS "Viitorul", Victor URSU at ursu.victoor@gmail.com or call 069017396.
Public procurement must be much simpler, clearer and more transparent. However, this is a prerequisite for generating healthy competition on the procurement market, but also for effective projects implemented by public authorities. Given that Moldova's legislation is gradually aligned with the European one, both authorities and economic operators need permanent training in the field to ensure an efficient public procurement process. It was the message of the workshop in public procurement that took place within the project "Innovative Improvements in the Public Procurement System of the Republic of Moldova through Inclusion, Creativity and Law Enforcement Practices" funded by the European Union and co-financed by the Hanns Seidel - Republic of Moldova Foundation.
The Workshop talked about the "Guide for Contracting Authorities", which was distributed to the participants. The topics addressed within the workshop concerned legislative provisions, procurement methods, sources of access to information on public procurement and the redress system in public procurement.
Vadim Turcan, a public procurement specialist, talked about the procurement of works, including the drafting of tender bids, offers, rules of communication between authorities and economic operators, and the most frequent problems encountered in bidding. During the second part of the session, the participants were familiarized with the appeal procedure, including how to file an appeal, the terms of filing and the mistakes to be avoided. For her part, Ecaterina Meaun, a public procurement specialist, reviewed the main legislative changes in public procurement, with reference to value thresholds, deadlines for publication of advertisements, evaluation criteria and conditions for canceling a procurement. Referring to the change in the value of contracts acquisition, a common problem, it was mentioned that the value of the additional contracted goods may not exceed 15% of the initial value of the contract, subject to price observance and quality requirements.
When making offers, Meaun said that it is necessary to thoroughly study the tender documentation, purchase data sheet, specifications and any other document that is an integral part of the set of documents attached to the tender documentation. it is recommended to be present at the opening of the bids, requesting the minutes of opening the bids and indicating the opinion separately in the minutes until it is signed.
"We are learning on the go. It is certain that the procurement procedures must be correct in order to ensure the quality of goods and services to the citizens", said Mariana Vlaico, a specialist in the Stauceni City Hall.
For further details, please contact the press officer, Victor URSU, at the following address: ursu.victoor@gmail.com or at 069017396.
Transparency of decisions by central and local public authorities would boost the country's economic development, given the high degree of economic development in countries with a high transparency index. East of Sweden, Norway, Denmark. The opacity of public authorities generates corruption. Both official data and independent surveys include local public authorities at the top of the entities affected by corruption. This is the opinion expressed by IDIS Viitorul jurist Viorel Pîrvan during the "15 minutes of realism" economic show.
The Republic of Moldova has the legal framework on transparency and access to public information, but the level of knowledge of the rights offered to citizens is very low. Only 44% of citizens know about the existence of laws guaranteeing access to public information held by public authorities.
Although rational public authorities are bound, "only nine district administrations have published information on public meetings and only seven administrations have published the projects that have been discussed at these meetings. Fifteen districts did not organize public consultations on these projects, and only Straseni district organized such consultations for all decision-making projects, placing the ad on the web. Regarding public procurement, only Orhei and Rezina published on the web pages monitoring reports on the execution of public procurement contracts ".
"The comparative analysis for 2016 indicates for some rayon public administrations a progress towards 2015 in terms of ensuring access to public information and transparency in the work of local government. Of course, cases of passivity were also identified in opening public data to citizens and ensuring their participation in the decision-making process. If we are to make a general average of the transparency score accumulated by the districts, we will see a slight increase, in 2015 it was 27.1%, and in the year 2016 the average constituted 32.6%, "considers Viorel Pârvan.
According to Pîrvan, the declaration of the wealth and personal interests of the president, vice-presidents and civil servants was not published on a raion web page. The results of the monitoring also show that only Sîngerei district communicated through the website the information contained in the minutes of the selection board for the vacant position, including the committee evaluation and the applicants' ranking. The best examples of opening information on social services to citizens are the administrations of the Ungheni and Edinet rayons. Regrettably, no webpage contains the financial analyzes of municipal enterprises subordinated to the district council, with information on the structure of assets, assets, income, receivables, and debts of these entities.
In conclusion, Pîrvan said that a fully transparent local administration presupposes that the public authorities guarantee free access to information and ensure the correct and timely information of citizens on matters of public interest.
The show is made by IDIS Viitorul in partnership with Radio Free Europe.
For more details, contact the Public Relations Coordinator IDIS Viitorul, Victor URSU at ursu.victoor@gmail.com or call 069017396.
The procurement system is a weak sport of the entire governance system. This system can only function in accordance with the integrity standards or against them. For this reason, for better governing on the public authorities of any level, it is strongly recommended that these authorities practice openness, transparency, and inclusion, providing civil society with opportunities to watch over the use public money. The legislation of the Republic of Moldova assigns an important role to civil society organizations' participation in the monitoring, observation, and supervision of the public procurement process. The only trouble is that we find a great gap between what is written the law and the manner in which these provisions are observed. And we are talking once again about the negative record of the Chisinau City Hall.
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Civil society plays an essential role in monitoring public procurement and ensuring transparency in the award and execution of public procurement contracts. In cases where authorities are not guided by the principles of transparency, integrity and efficiency in procurement procedures, or even are part of corruption schemes, civil society organizations can use the information obtained in the monitoring process to mobilize citizens to ask for more responsibility on the part of the government. The participants in the training for civil society within the framework of the project "Innovative Improvements in the public procurement system of the Republic of Moldova through inclusion, creativity and compliance practices", funded by the European Union.
Several representatives of civil society from different regions of the country benefited from a complex Training Program in the field of public procurement monitoring between September 26 and November 16. The purpose of this program is to strengthen civil society capacities in the Republic of Moldova in the monitoring of public procurement by applying innovative tools to identify violations, frauds, and corruption and to generate solutions for improving the procurement system.
The training program approached subjects of interest in the field of public procurement, such as: the functioning mechanism of the public procurement system, the legislation in force, the procurement planning process, the choice of the proper procurement procedure, the functioning of the dispute settlement system and the participation in the meetings examination, as well as the rules on advertising and transparency.
Also, within the Program, the representatives of procurement institutions, such as the Ministry of Finance, the Public Procurement Agency, the National Agency for Contemporary Affairs, the Court of Accounts, the National Anticorruption Center, were invited in some sessions to present the policies they are developing in the field and to discuss with the participants the practical aspects of the procurement process. At the same time, in order to promote good local practices and to intensify the actions for monitoring of acquisitions at the local level, 3 work visits were carried out in different regions of the country (Rezina, Balti, Cahul), where the participants had the opportunity to see the results of the activities and how they have contributed to improving local governance.
At the end of the Program, IDIS "Viitorul" together with civil society representatives created a Civil Society Dialogue Platform on Public Procurement Monitoring with a view to intensifying cooperation and facilitating dialogue between different civil society organizations in different regions of the country who are in charge of overseeing public money. However, only through reinforced actions and joint actions, monitoring activities can have visible results on the efficiency of budgets and good governance.
For further details, please contact the press officer, Victor URSU, at the following address: ursu.victoor@gmail.com or at 069017396.
The degree of transparency of the contracting authority highlights fairness and activity in the interest of the citizen of the elected people. However, the judicious spending of public money through public procurement contracts is also an important means of balancing macro-budget at the national level. It is one of the messages of the Cahul event on good practices in public procurement monitoring, which took place within the project "Innovative Improvements in the public procurement system of the Republic of Moldova through inclusion, creativity and compliance practices", implemented by IDIS "Viitorul", with the financial support of the European Union.
"Transparency makes work more efficient, especially since there is the practice of online submission of opening sessions for public tenders. From the beginning of the public procurement process to its completion and even thereafter, the contracting authority must manifest and comply with the regulations to ensure the transparency of this process. Also, any citizen or civil society actor must have unrestricted access to the public procurement documents and/or information. This is reflected both in the provision of the required information on request and in the ex officio publication on the authority's website of data or information on the public procurement carried out, explained the mayor of Cahul, Nicolae Dandis.
Sofia Ursul, chair of the Citizens' Initiative Association, argues that a complementary objective is to enable purchasers to make more effective use of public procurement in favor of meeting common goals for the benefit of society: these include environmental protection, resource efficiency, promoting innovation and inclusion social conditions and ensuring the best possible conditions for providing high-quality public services. "The pursuit of this goal can help to increase public spending in the long run. For example, giving less importance to the lowest initial price and more importance to the lowest life-cycle cost. "
According to the project coordinator, Carolina Ungureanu, all those who contribute through their actions to the implementation of the provisions of the current legal framework on public procurement need to be aware that the public procurement dossier is a public document and that, once stated, any confusion regarding what the dossier constitutes as a public document and which confidential data should be eliminated through a strong national policy towards promoting the legitimate interests of citizens in the transparency of public procurement contracts.
In conclusion, the participants in the discussion said that, in the end, not the plurality of types of purchases must count, but the final outcome of them, namely how to proceed to make public money as efficiently as possible.
For further details, please contact the press officer, Victor URSU, at the following address: ursu.victoor@gmail.com or at 069017396.
The Republic of Moldova is not prepared for the liberalization of the Motor Third Party Liability Insurance Market, given that changes need to be made in stages to avoid chaos and other problems. Austria took ten years to move from regulated prices to market liberalization. This is the opinion expressed by the journalist Vlad Bercu in the show "15 minutes of economic realism".
Parliament adopted a decision repealing a point in the 2015-approved law on the liberalization of Motor Third Party Liability (MTPL) with effect from 1 February 2018. "It is impossible to reform the RCA sector in two years".
According to Vlad Bercu, probably through the liberalization of the RCA market it was a political zeal or wanted to enter the graces of the creditors. The fact is that a two-year period is too low and the postponement was expected in the conditions of a deep crisis in the insurance market since 2015. Issues in the insurance sector were similar to those in the banking sector (billionaire theft). There were fraudulent takeovers to the largest insurance companies: ASITO, Moldasig. Moreover, on the grounds that the transition to the risk-based oversight system is not fully completed, the monthly ex-post monitoring allows late intervention, which would not definitely solve the stressful situations in companies, caused by the accumulation of diminished and unjustifiably reduced insurance premiums.
"The liberalization of RCA and Green Card tariffs is proposed to be implemented step by step in a prudent regime through Regulatory intervention measures, thus demonstrating the need to develop prompt and efficient levers that will provide NCFM with the ability to determine the calculation method basic insurance premiums, types of rectifying coefficients and their calculation method, the minimum rate and the maximum share of insurer's and profit margin expenses included in the structure of the insurance premium, as well as other actuarial aspects, "Vlad said Bercu.
To this end, in order to avoid a bad impact on the insurance market, the liberalization process (irreversibility of which is a certainty) must be (re) thought and linked to the evolving context of socio-economic development
It is difficult to gradually implement the liberalization of this market without a clear date. Canceling the entry into force of changes may give erroneous signals to external development partners. They may think that the Republic of Moldova has completely renounced the liberalization of this market.
The show is made by IDIS Viitorul in partnership with Radio Free Europe.
For more details, contact the Public Relations Coordinator IDIS Viitorul, Victor URSU at ursu.victoor@gmail.com or call 069017396.
The best solution for the efficiency of the procurement system remains to increase the transparency of the entire process, from posting the procurement announcement to signing the contract, with all the payments made to the provider, the goods, and services delivered, displayed in a transparent manner to all interested parties. It was one of the topics of the Balti debates, which took place within the project "Innovative Improvements in the public procurement system of the Republic of Moldova through inclusion, creativity and compliance practices", implemented by IDIS "Viitorul", with the financial support of the European Union.
"The primordial interest of the contracting authorities must be the transparency and the efficiency of the spending of public resources, not the protection of the interests of the private actors, and this has been achieved by the City Hall of Bălţi, which placed the city at the top of the public procurement transparency ranking, explained Irina Serdiuc, secretary of the Balti Municipal Council.
According to her, procurement competition is supported by transparency, so public authorities directly support that all information about a bid is advertised, as well as companies themselves, in order to ensure a clear balance in the market offer area. "We have published all the procurement contracts on the City Hall website. An improved legal framework regulating the procurement process is sufficiently supple, with clear provisions, penalties and transparency rules. "
"Total transparency is the only solution, both to prevent any conflict of interest situations and to discourage tenderers in pursuing the contracting of the contracting authority and to delay the realization of investment projects, more than any type of pecuniary type requesting a guarantee of participation" , said Diana Grosu, president of the "Association for Human Rights - Lex XXI".
Public procurement should emphasize both the transparency of public money to citizens and the creation of a fair and predictable competition framework for all interested private stakeholders without favoring certain actors already in the market.
"Other institutions are able to mimic the transparency of public procurement by building detailed and complete sections on their own site, but when they open the pages, we can see with surprise the lack of information," said Carolina Ungureanu, project coordinator.
In conclusion, the participants in the discussion mentioned that the public procurement process should be based on transparency and open competition between contracting authorities and tenderers on the one hand and between the bidders involved in the process on the other. Each contracting authority has the duty to consider mainly a number of issues related to ensuring the effectiveness of public money spent, this process is realized only for the benefit of the public interest, as well as the transparency of the acquisitions made towards any citizen.
For further details, please contact the press officer, Victor URSU, at the following address: ursu.victoor@gmail.com or at 069017396.
Public procurement control systems are critical to almost exclusively the process's legality, the quality of goods and services, ensuring cost-effectiveness by encouraging competition and transparency. In this respect, good public procurement monitoring practices were discussed in Rezina by local public authorities, civil society, and procurement specialists. The discussions took place within the framework of the project "Innovative Improvements in the public procurement system of the Republic of Moldova through inclusion, creativity and compliance practices", implemented by IDIS "Viitorul", with the financial support of the European Union..
Procurement - and implicitly public investment - is a major opportunity for rebalancing the national economy. However, due to some malfunctions in the functioning of the national mechanisms, but also at the level of the market, the Republic of Moldova wants to align its public procurement system to the European standards.
"With extremely harsh legislation and abundant exceptions and an institutional architecture in which most authorities with competence in the field are limited to verifying the lawfulness of procedures rather than the efficient way of spending public money or the opportunity to make significant investments, The Republic of Moldova today has a public procurement system with major weaknesses, "explained Eugenia Rosca, president of the AO" Concordia ".
Tudor Iascenco, director of the newspaper, said that local public authorities tend to hide public procurement contracts and only favor a limited number of companies to win the auctions. "A football stadium in the amount of 72 million lei was built, although the initial cost was announced at 25 million lei. Overnight increased the price. The private sector is not necessarily more willing to stimulate transparency and, as a consequence, an increase in free market competition, especially in some areas of activity where there is almost a clear division of the market among some big players. "
Mayors attending the talks on the visit argue that they use various tools to ensure the transparency of public procurement, including the publication of advertisements in the Public Procurement Bulletin, but also on web pages or in the local print media, but are experiencing difficulties due to the lack of procurement specialists responsible for communication, as well as the modest involvement of civil society and citizens.
"For the efficiency of public spending, we need to get the best results in public procurement (the best value for money). To achieve this, it is important to generate the strongest possible competition for public contracts awarded on the domestic market. Tenderers must be able to compete on equal terms and distortion of competition should be avoided, "concluded Carolina Ungureanu, project coordinator.
For further details, please contact the press officer, Victor URSU, at the following address: ursu.victoor@gmail.com or at 069017396.
