OREANDA-NEWS. April 06, 2011. Carrying out of public procurement procedures require strict control. Unfortunately, despite a significant improvement of legislation for transparency in procurement, this area remains attractive for those who want to tear off a piece of the budget pie. Only the control, prevention of abuse and violations of fundamental legal evaluation can ensure integrity and effectiveness of procurement.

To prevent abuse, the Government in March 28 instructed the Ministry of the economy together with the Main Control and Revision Office, Antimonopoly Committee, the State Statistics Committee to study the efficiency of budgetary funds and strengthening financial discipline in the public procurement.

The main requirement of the Government is to make the procurement process as transparent as possible. According to the Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykola Azarov, the only such action can be an effective tool to combat corruption and prevent theft of public funds.

The state can no longer tolerate the situation, as in 2008-2009, when most procurement tenders took place without public through intermediary firms.

The new Government of the first steps has increased demands on government procurement. In 2010 the volume of the procurement budget totalled over 172 billion UAH. Every year is about 100 thousand procurement, involving thousands of participants.

Violations of public procurement are set during the 2010 to 2018 objects, for the January-February 2011 - to 305. This often pay for government funds the cost of goods, works or services at a price higher than the tender documentation, or in general without a competitive procurement procedure.

Overall for 2010 by the timely intervention of staff of the Control and Inspection Service warned of violations of legislation on tendering nearly 1.4 billion UAH, including cancelled auctions of almost 0.9 billion UAH. In January and February, the corresponding rates are 349.1 million UAH and 341.7 million UAH.

AMC also has put serious obstacles for unfair procurement. During the last year the Committee considered the 21 case of violation of legislation on economic competition protection in the form of anticompetitive concerted actions of bidders.

Materials of inspections, where there are signs of criminal acts directed to the law enforcement agencies.

In particular, is in the verification of legality of public procurement for military nutrition.

To ensure the objectivity at checking it was alienated of his duties Deputy Economy Minister Olexandr Suhomlyn, which approved the purchase of services from food without competition. Also by order of the Ministry of Economy Department of Public Procurement and procurement from April 1 subordinated another deputy minister - Vasil Marmazov.

According to preliminary data, Oleksandr Sukhomlyn has granted permission for Ministry of Defence for use of procurement services for the second quarter to one executive in the amount of UAH 621 million - considerably more than the budget - for 4 firms without competition. As is well known, for the first quarter Ministry of Economy issued a similar permit on condition that further procurement of catering services to military personnel was conducted by competitive bidding.

However, during the quarter, the Defence Ministry did not conduct a proper tender procedure and again asked the Ministry of Economy for permission to buy food for military service in one performer. Was this in favor of the official, who put his signature, law enforcement is finding out.

Also it was revealed a number of other violations, including the taking of budgetary obligations for the payment of food over the past years, during procedures of tenders and so on.

Overall, the State Financial Inspectorate, which is commissioned by the Cabinet on February 17, 2011 began checking the efficiency of budgetary funds for catering soldiers, has found that with the transition to a system involving the entity, the amount of budget financing of food supply of military have increased almost doubled while reducing the number of personnel. So the answer to the question: why the cost of soldier whack has increased - now find out the auditors.

To improve procedures for public procurement it was developed a draft amendments to existing law that has already passed the first reading in the Parliament. According to the document, in particular, it is proposed to introduce number of procedural changes and increased penalties for public officials.

According to Mykola Azarov, every penny of taxpayers’ money should be spent transparently. And this issue will stay in constant control of the Government of Ukraine.