Newspapers in public procurement: Implementation of direct agreement and electronic means
The application of the Law on Amendments to the Law on Public Procurement began on December 10, 2022. year, after which the BiH Public Procurement Agency also worked on setting up a new version of the e-Procurement system.
“The Law on Amendments to the Law on Public Procurement began to be applied except for the provisions of Article 4a. and 4b. which will be applied from the date of accession of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the European Union, i.e. new para. (5), (6), (7), (8), (9), (10), (11), (12) and (13) of Article 75 of the Law, the application of which is effective from September 10, 2022. year”, said the Agency for Akta.ba.
NEW FUNCTIONALITIES
In accordance with the amendments to the Law, new functionalities were created in the e-Procurement system, and the Public Procurement Agency prepared a short instruction for new functionalities for contractual bodies and bidders.
The new functionalities that have been created relate to:
– Implementation of the direct agreement procedure in the e-Procurement information system,
– The possibility of conducting the complete procedure of a direct agreement through the portal. In that case, there are two options on the portal for publishing a call for price proposals/offers (open and closed call).
– Publication of the award notice, as well as the publication of the annual notice on the awarded contracts in the case of a competitive request for tender submission procedure
– Obligatory publication of the procurement plan on the portal
– Publication of procurement notification/annual notification for services from Annex II according to the new Rulebook
– Mandatory publication of the basic elements of the contract
– Publication of information for the negotiation procedure without publication of procurement notices and implementation of all phases of that procedure through the portal
– Informing the bidder about the received complaint through the portal
– Introducing/marking a new offer status
– Introduction of mandatory justification for not dividing the procedure into lots and mandatory justification for choosing not to submit the bid for all lots in the procurement notification
THREE OPTIONS FOR DIRECT CONTRACTS
As for the direct agreement, the novelty in the Law is that it is possible to implement the direct agreement electronically, and accordingly a new functionality has been implemented in the e-Procurement system.
Therefore, the implementation of a direct agreement in the e-Procurement system was created in such a way that there are three options:
1) Publication of the report on the conducted procedure (the procedure was not carried out through the system) – This is the standard option, that after the direct agreement procedure “in paper” (outside the e-Procurement system), only the report on the conducted public procurement procedure is published;
2) Publication of an open call for the submission of informative offers – This is an option to publish a call for the submission of price proposals/offers on the public part of the e-Procurement system. By posting an invitation this way, the invitation is visible to everyone. Additionally, in this option, the contracting authority can mark one or more bidders so that the e-Procurement system sends them a notification that the call for the submission of price proposals/offers has been published;
3) Publication of a closed call for the delivery of informative offers – This is an option in which the call for the delivery of price proposals/offers is not published on the public part of the e-Procurement system, but the contracting authority designates one or more bidders so that the system will give them insight/provide an invitation for the delivery of the price proposal/offer, and sent a notification that the invitation was delivered to them. In this option, only those bidders designated by the contracting authority see the invitation to submit price proposals/bids in their user profiles and only they can submit bids through the e-Procurement system
“Furthermore, if by “direct” public procurement you mean a negotiation procedure without publication of notices, as the least transparent public procurement procedure, we point out that certain changes have been made in the Law to increase the transparency of this type of procedure. Amendments to the Law, in relation to the previous legislation, in Article 28 paragraph (4) provide that in the cases referred to in Article 21 points), b) and c) of the Law, the contracting authority shall publish on the public procurement portal information about the negotiation procedure it intends to conduct without publication of the notice on procurement, by making the tender documentation available to all interested candidates”, the Agency explained to our portal.
They note that paragraph (5) of Article 28 of the Law stipulates that in the cases referred to in Article 21, point d) of the Law, the contracting authority may publish on the public procurement portal information about the negotiation procedure it intends to conduct without publishing the procurement notice, by make the documentation available to all interested candidates.
In the following period, if during the use of the developed functionalities it turns out that certain changes/refinishes will need to be made to them, the Agency will inform all users of the e-Procurement system and update the short instructions published on the Agency’s website.
Please note that all the mentioned functionalities are also available to users on the Akta.ba portal in the sections Tenders and Award of contracts.