OREANDA-NEWS. May 04, 2012. At the 11th Annual Conference of the International Competition Network (ICN) in Rio-de-Janeiro a delegation of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) held negotiations with representatives of the Federal Competition Commission of the United Mexican States on the issues of public procurement, reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

FAS was represented by Mikhail Evrayev, the Head of the Department for Control over Public Procurement, and Andrey Yunak, Deputy Head of the Department for International Economic Cooperation. The Federal Competition Commission of the United Mexican States was represented by Paolo Benedetti, Director General for Institutional Relations and International Affairs, and Heidi Sada, Director, International Affairs Division.

Mr. Benedetti informed his Russian colleagues about specifics of Mexican system of state procurement that uses CompraNet – an electronic system for distributing information about public procurement to the community.

CompraNet has similar functions with the Brazil’s public procurement system - COMPRASNET. Along with obvious advantages, Mexican CompraNet and Brazilian COMPRASNET have a number of shortcomings. Due to full openness of procedures and availability of information about registered suppliers, the Federal Competition Commission exposes a considerable number of violations of fair competition. The most widespread violations are collusions between the interested suppliers and unlawful refusals to accept suppliers’ bids at the first stage of tenders.

Unlike the Russian Federation, both Mexico and Brazil do not have a single portal publishing all information about public procurement in these countries, and for this reason the necessary information can only be found by browsing several thousand regional and municipal web-sites. Russia does not have such problems because all information is accumulated on a single web-site - www.zakupki.gov.ru.

In his turn, Mikhail Evrayev informed Mexico’s officials about the system of public procurement in Russia and the results achieved in recent years in increasing transparency and competitive ability of public procurement.

Summing up the meeting, the parties agreed that a FAS delegation would visit Mexico for a meeting with the Secretariat of the Mexico’s Service for Financial Control and Administrative Development in order to exchange opinions in the field of public procurement.