OREANDA-NEWS. May 04, 2012. A delegation of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) held negotiations with the Secretariat of Economic Law, the Ministry of Justice of the Federative Republic of Brazil, 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. Brazil was represented by the Head of a Bid-Rigging Unit, Fernanda Machado, and a Unit Coordinator, Felipe Rocket.

The parties discussed specifics of the systems of state procurement in Russia and Brazil and exchanged the best practices in preventing fraud at tenders and auctions.

Public procurement through electronic portals was in the focus on the discussion. For instance, Brazil has an electronic system COMPRASNET, which is an importance element of Brazil’s Electronic Government. COMPRASNET was introduced to unify the public procurement system, cut down public expenses for procurement and make the process more open. The system is also designed to increase the number of public suppliers for the state needs, decrease the costs of participation for those suppliers and intensify competition amongst suppliers, which, in its turn, should reduce the costs and increase the quality of the supplied goods and services.

Under the framework of COMPRASNET, Brazil develop a SIASG system – which is a set of electronic tools for managing materials and financial flows in public procurement and for organizing electronic trading. SIASG has considerably reduced the time of organizing public trading under the standard procurement list published on the web-site of СOMPRASNET.

The parties pointed out similarities between Russian and Brazilian systems of public procurement through electronic trading, which undoubtedly has positive impact upon competition in general and welfare and end-consumers.

Summing up the meeting, the parties agreed to continue exchanging experience in state procurement preventing violations in this field.

“In Russia we have travelled a long way of public procurement reforms and we have a lot to share with our foreign colleagues. At the same time we must be aware of and implement in Russia those interesting elements that are in public procurement systems of other countries”, stated Mikhail Evrayev.

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The Bid-Rigging Unit within the Secretariat of Economic Law was formed in 2007 upon a proposal of Brazil’s Ministry of Justice. The main goal of the new Unit is to prevent and expose cartels at public tenders and to prosecute such cartels.