Author: Olga Diaconu
The full original version can be accessed here
According to the procurement plan for 2023, the General Directorate for Communal Housing and Development (DGLCA) expressed their intent to spend 329,785,904 lei without VAT through negotiations without prior publication of a contract notice. The amount expected to be spent through the negotiations without publication accounted to 63.49% of the total amount of purchases planned by DGLCA (519,391,628 lei without VAT). The total procurement budget of DGLCA was distributed as follows:
Goods – 69,232,334 lei without VAT;
Works – 99,132,333 lei without VAT;
Services – 351,026,961 lei without VAT.
Therefore, from the information published on the page of the Public Procurement Agency, it needs to be noted that, throughout the first three months of 2023, DGLCA concluded a considerable number of procurement contracts of several tens of millions of lei through negotiations without publication. Most of these were concluded with municipal enterprises and municipal sanitation departments, with the object of maintenance and sanitation services of public spaces.
From the explanations given verbally by the director of the DGLCA, Ion Burdiumov, the contracts concluded through negotiations without publication with municipal enterprises and municipal sanitation departments represented a way of allocating financial resources to them. Previously, these resources were allocated to enterprises and municipal departments outside public procurement procedures. In the current year, contracts were concluded on the grounds that the control bodies had alerted the DGLCA about the need to carry out public procurement procedures in this regard.
However, questions arise in relation to the efficiency of the use of public money and ensuring fair competition. On the one hand, DGLCA supplies these municipal enterprises with the necessary equipment necessary for the provision of maintenance, sanitation and/or snow removal services, purchased with public money. On the other hand, the DGLCA also assigns these municipal enterprises contracts for the provision of maintenance and sanitation services, snow removal, etc., which they can carry out using the equipment purchased by the DGLCA.
The above mentioned was openly asserted by means of a Facebook post published on November 29, 2022, where they claim that DGLCA had purchased six new tractors equipped with trailers; brushes; shovels; 25 salt sprayer; but also five devices equipped with salt sprayers; brushes and pavement cleaning equipment. All of these were transferred under the management of the municipal enterprises for housing services of the municipality of Chisinau. In total, DGLCA had transferred to following equipment under the management of municipal sanitation enterprises: 50 tractors, 50 trailers, 31 salt sprayers, ten tipper vans, five tipper trucks, 20 Hako units, ten “Avant 745” skid steer loaders, one bulldozer, five units Dacia Dokker, two UAZ 3309 units, 15 units of mechanized sanitation equipment attached to the tractor, but also an evacuation vehicle. At the same time, the Facebook post mentions that DGLCA had purchased 1,200 tons of salt in 2022, which was stored in the warehouses of all sector enterprises, and six tons of liquid calcium chloride.
From the data published in the contracts section on the website of the Public Procurement Agency, it appears that DGLCA had spent around 20 million lei on tractors, accessories for tractors and machines, spare parts, technical salt – only in the last three years.
In essence, municipal enterprises carry out entrepreneurial activity and should be on an equal footing with other economic entities participating in public procurement procedures. The difference between municipal enterprises and other enterprises results from the provisions of Law no. 246/2017 regarding the state enterprise and the municipal enterprise: “The municipal enterprise is a legal entity that carries out entrepreneurial activity on the basis of assets owned by the administrative-territorial unit/Găgăuzia autonomous territorial unit transferred under its management and/or as a contribution to the social capital and on the basis of the property obtained by it as a result of the economic-financial activity”.
It turns out that the municipal enterprise must use the municipal property, which it manages, to carry out entrepreneurial activity and obtain profit for the benefit of the founder, which is the Chisinau Municipal Council. In the presented case, the founder allocates financial resources to equip the municipal enterprises with the necessary technology, in order to later purchase services from the same municipal enterprises through non-competitive procurement procedures (NFP). In this way, other economic operators are eliminated from the competition, which could provide the same services, procuring or renting on their own the equipment necessary to provide the services. The holding of an open tender would also give other economic entities the opportunity to submit bids, which would facilitate competition and offer the possibility of signing more advantageous contracts.
This might still not be enough to drive out the risks of distortion of competition, because other businesses would not be put on equal terms with municipal enterprises, which are funded with public money, by the same authority that ultimately purchases the services. This support measure falls under the provisions of Law 139/2012 on state aid.
The Public Procurement Agency has developed several monitoring reports of these procurement procedures, noting the lack of a justified basis for the application of negotiation procedures without prior publication of a notice of participation.
Acest material este realizat în cadrul proiectului ”Banii Publici sunt și Banii Mei!”, implementat de Asociația pentru Guvernare Eficientă și Responsabilă AGER cu susținerea financiară din partea National Endowment for Democracy (NED).