OREANDA-NEWS. September 03, 2010. The official site of the Russian Federation for information about competitive bidding - torgi.gov.ru – started working in a normal operational mode. At the first stage, the site will contain information about competitive bidding for the contracts related to federal property, reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

From mid-July 2010, the site was working in an operational testing mode. It was accessible for registration of new users (tender and auction organizers), that can include the authorities, local self-government bodies, state and municipal agencies and enterprises and commercial and non-commercial organizations.

On 14th July 2010, No.400 Order of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) was signed, according to which from 1st September 2010 all organizers of tenders and auctions for the right to own and use federal property are obligated to place information about such tenders and auctions on torgi.gov.ru. Under the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition” (Article 17 and 17.1), failure to place relevant information on this site constituted the grounds for judiciary invalidating tenders and auctions and transactions completed as a result of them (in particular, at the suit of the antimonopoly authority). From 1st January 2011, the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition”, publishing information about tenders and auctions with the property of the constituent territories of the Russian Federation and municipalities on torgi.gov.ru also becomes mandatory.

Foremost, it will ensure openness and transparency of competitive bidding procedures and entrepreneurs will have direct access to the real property on lease.

Before launching the site, information about tenders was scattered through various Internet-resources, which considerably reduced access of entrepreneurs to the state property. Now any entrepreneur can find information about all tenders and auctions on a single site, for leasing, for instance, real estate of numerous federal state unitary enterprises and organizations.

“Creating such a resource will help cutting down corruption, overcoming administrative barriers for competitive bidding and increasing efficiency of using state property”, believes Stats-Secretary Andrey Tsarikovskiy, Deputy Head of FAS Russia.