Since 2015, the state budget has given out a grand total of €630 million euros in tenders without an actual race. In the opening stages of these tenders, in some cases only one operator participated in the race, whereas in other cases the rest of the operators were disqualified from the race, leading to a predetermined winner.
More than half of the tenders in the healthcare sector have only had one operator participating in the ‘race’. Over 6000 tenders were carried out in this sector alone, leading to a final value of €92 million euros, at play in a race-less tender model.
Municipalities, government institutions, the Agency of Concentrated Purchases (ABP), the Albanian Fund of Progress and the Road Authority are amongst the sectors that have given out the most tenders, without a race.
Together they have given out over 3000 tenders valued at 541 million euros. The economy expert Selami Xhepo explained for Euronews Albania the nature of these violations in the public procurements law, achieved through the eradication of a fair race system.
“In the public procurements law in Albania, procuration through a race is the first method that is foreseen by the law and this method presumes that in more than 90% of cases, procurements should be based on a race. The avoidance of a race in the legislation is only allowed for specific projects, that are linked to national security, the protection of the country, therefore we are speaking about secret technology that could be offered by an operator, whereas in all other cases, a race is inevitable,” he said.
Another tendering procedure that doesn’t guarantee fair competition is the one that involved a straightforward negotiation and thus doesn’t need a race.
In such cases, the contracting authority negotiates directly with the company that it selects, without publishing an announcement for a tender at all.
Over 8000 tenders have been given through a direct negotiation since 2015.based on an analysis conducted by the Agency of Public Procurements, only in 2020, 416 tenders were given without a race and their value amount to a whopping 48.6 million euros.
Contracts without a race were mainly signed in the health sector linked to the pandemic, and reconstruction. According to Xhepa, tenders without a race, feed corruption. PPPs according to him, also exhibit a lack of competition.
“Unfortunately in our country, instead of having this process improve it has degraded even more. First of all, this directly feeds corruption and most of all, it is linked to the efficacy of public spending and the deep weaknesses that our system exhibits in the actual realization of public projects. The government, which is holding a very critical stance regarding the practices that have been followed up until now, in fact when it comes to its own upcoming projects, we see serious figures, which also avoid a fair race. A clear example is a project valued at over $2 billion dollars of the port of Durres, which exhibits a flagrant violation of the law of public procurements, because public investments cannot be done with special laws, but only through the law of public procurements,” he argued.
Experts are calling out for necessary legal changes as well as more work by law-enforcing authorities regarding the criminal prosecution of those that abuse with public funds.
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