State procurement reforms allow Kazakhstan to save over $800M (Exclusive)
BAKU, Azerbaijan, Nov. 14
By Nargiz Sadikhova - Trend:
Kazakhstan was able to save 319 billion tenge ($817.4 million) during first nine months of 2019 on state procurement, which is over six times more than during 2015 (50 billion tenge or $128.1 million), Kazakhstan’s Vice-Minister of Finance Ruslan Beketayev told Trend in an interview.
According to him, notwithstanding the overall stable volume, the provision of annual economy growth in state procurement, as well as significant expansion of competitive environment has become possible thanks to transparency and openness of public procurement processes.
Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has previously noted that state procurement contains a great reserve (according to some assessments, approximately 400 billion tenge or $1 billion), which could be used to solve relevant social issues.
In this regard, according to Beketayev, the ministry of finance of Kazakhstan promptly responds to all arising issues by making amendments to the law ‘On State Procurement’ and Rules for Public Procurement.
Thus, corresponding amendments were made to the law and the rules a couple of times since 2015.
According to Beketayev, in order to provide for transparency, state procurement is now being held online, its procedures were automated.
"The entirety of the information, including procurement plans and various documents are available openly on procurement website. We have automated appeal procedures of procurement results by contractors, and the procurement control is implemented online in real time, the results of which are also available for everyone," vice minister said.
Talking about the activities of the ministry to decrease the share of the procurement implemented via non-competitive methods, from a single source, Beketayev noted that it is this exact target which is of priority to the ministry.
"Since January 1, 2019, five grounds for procurement from one source via direct agreements signing, are legally excluded. Starting from this year, in the case if a public procurement is unsuccessful, the customers are obliged to re-implement it, until the competitive conditions are achieved," Beketayev said.
He added that previously if a procurement was not implemented, clients could make agreements using one source. According to the official, all these measures allowed to significantly decrease the share of procurement from one source from 53 percent in 2018 to 11 percent for nine months of 2019.
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