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SARAJEVO, April 2 (FENA) - Representatives of the international community in Bosnia and Herzegovina have called on BiH authorities to finally adopt amendments to the Public Procurement Law in order to eliminate deficiencies in the law itself and tackle and prevent corruption, but also harmonize the law with the acquis communautaire.
As it was pointed out today at the conference where the BiH Public Procurement Agency presented projects that are also intended to improve and make the public procurement system more efficient, it was said that this area has been identified as the largest source of corruptive activities.
Head of the EU Delegation to BiH Lars Gunnar Wigemark emphasized that public procurements are the cornerstone of the acquis communautaire and without an efficient and transparent law, no state, including BiH will be able to become a member of the EU.
He commended the working group’s activities on amending the law itself which now should be reviewed by European Union experts to determine compliance with the acquis communautaire, which should become a practice in the future with all other laws.
Ultimately, parliaments are those that pass laws, but beforehand, they will be reviewed by the EU so as not to be in a situation of needing amendments subsequently, and such a process has already started in Republika Srpska and this is what the EU has been doing, says Wigemark, in the cases with other countries.
“It is necessary to introduce a culture of respect for rules and laws, and for it to be widely known if the laws are violated, sanctions and consequences will be felt,” explained Head of the EU Delegation to BiH.
What Wigemark, as well as USAID Director in BiH Peter Duffy and Director of the Public Procurement Agency in BiH, Đenan Salčin, stressed as important is to ensure a greater presence of civil society organizations in the public procurement process, which can make constructive pressure on the regulation of the area.
Within the framework of the presentation of the projects and work of the Agency, it was announced that by 2023, the whole public procurement system and procedures should be in electronic form with the aim of using digital technologies, and part of it is has already been enabled.
The participants pointed out that there will always be abuses in public procurement systems, but we have to hope that, by amending the law, which is expected by the end of the year, as there are no obstacles to its adoption, the cases of misuse would be visibly reduced.
“It became normal in BiH that the owner of the company applying for the tender is a son of the responsible person who publishes the tender. Such things have to change,” said Salčin.
He pointed out that in 2018, out of 225 cases of monitoring of individual public procurement procedures, only four cases were processed, two of which received a court epilogue, and this is precisely the reason why the responsibility of prosecutors and courts in the process of removing corruption from that system has been emphasized.
The public procurement system is one of the weakest links, Duffy estimated and compared this problem with a computer virus that is destroying the entire system, and in that chain of problems that are being created we also find reduced investments, money lost in that system is not spent in the development of the state, and also small companies are those that suffer greatly as well.
As the Public Procurement Agency announced, it intends to implement a number of other projects this year with the aim of improving the system, such as education of personnel at all levels and in doing this, it will receive assistance from the EU, USAID, and the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ).
(FENA) S. R.
