OREANDA-NEWS. April 16, 2014. The Head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service, Igor Artemiev, had a meeting with the top executives of the largest Russian grid companies: “Rosseti” OJSC and “Federal Grid Company of United Energy System” OJSC.

The parties discussed the issues of procurement policies of both companies. Among positive practices, Igor Artemiev pointed out the high level of procurement procedures regulation (up to 99%), which increases openness of the operations of procurers and bidders, and rebidding enabling to bring tender procedures more in line with the most transparent auction procedures.

Those advanced procurement methods resulted in more than 10% saving of the initial procurement price, which conforms to the best retrenchment measures in public procurement.

“All procurement operations of the Federal Grid Company are based on the principles of openness, competitiveness and reasonableness, while procedures account for both successful international practices as well as experience accumulated in Russia. In 2013, 91.8% of our procurement was organized through open procedures, of which over 98% used an electronic trading platform. In the past three years the economic effect of those measures reached over 10% annually, and only in 2013 the company saved 15.3 billion RUB in procurement. This way we plan to continue increasing efficiency of our investment process. By 2017 the company intends to decrease specific capitalizable costs by one third in comparison with 2012”, said Andrey Murov, the Chairman of the Board of “Federal Grid Company of United Energy System” OJSC.

As a prospective area of future work, apart from discussing FAS comments aimed at improving procurement policy, the parties reached consensus that it would be necessary to change the equipment certification mechanism as a preliminary stage of procurement procedures, which supports the proper quality and reliability of the supplied equipment, but is a barrier, especially for small suppliers, for taking part in bidding.

“Our task today is to devise the model provision on procurement operations that can be universally applied in procurement by state and private companies that are interested in increasing procurement efficiency. We undertake systematic efforts with the largest procurers: “Rosatom” State-Corporation, “Gazprom” OJSC. Now the largest grid companies, that have something to say in terms of implementing the best procurement practices, joined them”, stated Igor Artemiev, summing up the meeting results.