2020 Report of Transparent Public Procurement Rating
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2020 Report of Transparent Public Procurement Rating 20 20 Project is Financially Supported by the Open Society Institute Budapest Foundation (OSI) The opinions expressed in this draft document belong to the Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI) and its partner organizations, and do not reflect the positions of Open Society Institute Budapest Foundation (OSI). Therefore, this organization is not responsible for the content of this report. Contact Information: 20, T. Shevchenko Street Georgia, Tbilisi, 0108 Tel: (+ 995) 32 2 92 15 14 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.idfi.ge Contents Main Findings 01 Statistical Analysis 03 Recommendations 06 Foreword, Structure and Methodology 08 Statistical Analysis 2016-2020 10 Average by Benchmark Indicator 11 Average by the Stage of Public Procurement 11 TPPR Rating 2019-2020 12 TPPR Rating 2016-2018 14 Rating by Benchmark Indicators 16 Transparency Environment 16 Uniformity of Legislative Framework 18 Efficiency 20 Transparency 22 Accountability and Integrity 24 Competitiveness and Impartiality 26 Rating by the Stages of Public Procurement Process 28 General Characteristics 28 Pre-Tendering Phase 30 Tendering Phase 32 Post-Tendering Phase 34 Country Evaluations 36 Europe 36 Albania 36 Armenia 40 Azerbaijan 43 Belarus 46 Bosnia and Herzegovina 49 Czech Republic 53 Georgia 54 Hungary 57 Lithuania 59 Moldova 61 Poland 64 Romania 67 Slovakia 69 Ukraine 72 Asia and Oceania 76 Indonesia 76 Kazakhstan 79 Kyrgyzstan 82 Mongolia 84 Papua New Guinea 87 Philippines 90 Tajikistan 92 Africa 95 Benin 95 Burundi 98 Côte d'Ivoire 102 Kenya 104 Malawi 107 Mozambique 110 Senegal 112 Tanzania 115 Togo 117 Uganda 120 Zimbabwe 122 Americas 125 Bolivia 125 Costa Rica 127 Ecuador 130 El Salvador 132 Guatemala 134 Mexico 137 Paraguay 139 Venezuela 142 Annex - Terminology 145 Main Findings Public Procurement Legislation of nearly all evaluated countries lay out the basic principles and general framework of the procurement process, makes it operational and indicates how the law must be applied to specific circumstances; In most of the cases, public procurement legislation is accessible in a single governmental website, however, access to these documents in an electronic machine-readable format still constitutes a challenge in many participant countries; Public procurement legislation in all evaluated countries apply to all state budget entities and local government entities, however, the approach varies when it comes to applying the legislation to Legal Entities of Public Law (LEPL), state-owned companies and state non-commercial legal entities; The scope of coverage of public procurement legislation in various countries includes all sectors of the economy where competition is possible and exemptions are clearly listed in the legislation; In all cases there is a single or several state bodies responsible for managing public procurement, however, in most of the cases these bodies are not entitled to have own income in addition to state funding; In many cases electronic means still do not constitute the primary method of conducting public procurement; In a number of cases legislation sets preferences for domestic suppliers; In all participants countries, the legislation ensures the right to review in the procurement process for tender participants, however, problems are evident in regards to applying the right to potential suppliers as well as to the general public; In most of the cases, there is an independent review body in the country with the authority to review complaints and grant remedies, however, civil society members are usually excluded from its composition. TPPR-IDFI 01 Findings by the Stages of Public Procurement Process Most of the TPPR participant countries demonstrated a lack of transparency at the post-tendering stage of public procurement compared to the earlier stages of pre- tendering and tendering; Publishing information on sub-contractors, contract amendments as well as contract performance indicators proved to be particularly problematic; Countries usually publish information on tender notices, however, access to the information in a machine-readable format is highly limited; Approach to publishing submitted applications, bids and decision of tender committees varies across the countries; In cases when evaluation criteria include both price and quality, the winner is rarely chosen using a cost-effectiveness approach consisting of three factors: life-cycle cost, best price-quality ration, environmental and/or social costs; Access to submitted complaints and dispute resolution is problematic, especially in machine-readable electronic format; Public procurement annual plans are still not published by many TPPR participant countries. Findings by the Benchmark Indicators Among the six benchmark indicators, Transparency proved to be the most problematic direction of public procurement regulations among the countries covered by TPPR. This is largely explained by the fact that states still face significant problems in the direction of publishing post-tendering information. As for the pre-tendering and tendering phases, information is rarely published in electronic machine-readable format; Lower scores in the benchmark indicator of Transparency was one of the major factors negatively affecting the overall evaluations of the countries; The least problematic benchmark indicator was the Uniformity of the Legislative Framework since most of the TPPR participant countries have adopted the legislation directed at regulating public procurement, which includes the main principles of conducting state purchases and the legislation is applicable to a wide range of actors determined by the legislation; Competitiveness and Impartiality proved to be another well-performing benchmark indicator, which can be explained by the fact that most of the legislations in TPPR participant countries avoid including in itself regulations that would threaten competitiveness and impartiality. However, the picture of implementing these regulations in practice could be significantly different. 02 TPPR-IDFI Statistical Analysis Based on the overall TPPR evaluation of the participant countries Ukraine leads the TPP rating in the evaluation of 2019-2020. This is due to the fact that major reforms have been implemented in the country in the last two years, which also addressed the shortcoming indicated in the previous TPPR evaluation of Ukraine. During the last years, important positive changes have been introduced in the area of public procurement in Moldova. Thus, the country improved its position in the rating and moved from the 12th to the second position. Even though a number of positive developments have been seen in Georgia as well, the progress was not as significant as in the case of Ukraine and Moldova, thus Georgia holds the third position in the rating of 2019-2020. TPPR participant countries reaching the benchmark of 80% in the evaluation of 2019-2020 are Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Philippines and Romania. Some of the poorest performing countries in the TPPR evaluation of 2019-2020 are Tajikistan, Papua New Guinea, Burundi, Venezuela, Malawi, Azerbaijan, El Salvador and Zimbabwe. The overall evaluations of the given countries in the rating are below 60%. It should be noted that Armenia is not included in the list of countries with poor TPPR performance in the rating of 2019-2020. From the bottom of the rating in 2016-2018 Armenia moved to the middle of the rating. The reason for the latter is the reform executed in the public procurement system of Armenia, thus the evaluation of the country increased accordingly. Transparency Environment Since the benchmark indicator of Transparency Environment includes 5 questions/indicators only, over ten countries showed 100% performance in the area. These countries include European countries as well as the Philippines, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and El Salvador. TPPR-IDFI 03 The countries showing relatively poor performance in this direction in the evaluation of 2019-2020 are Togo, Azerbaijan and Belarus. Uniformity of Legislative Framework Based on the TPPR evaluation in 2019-2020 up to 10 countries reached the benchmark of 90% in the area of Uniformity of Legislative Framework. The list of well-performing countries is led by Ukraine and Georgia. Georgia held the second position in the evaluation of 2016-2018 as well, while Ukraine improved its position and moved to first place in the evaluation of 2019-2020. Some of the weak performing countries in the benchmark indicator in both periods were Guatemala, Burundi, Cota Rica and the Czech Republic. Efficiency The leading countries in the benchmark indicator of Efficiency in 2019-2020 were Ukraine and Romania with a 100% rating. Moldova and Lithuania also scored high in the area. In the evaluation of 2016-2018 together with Romania and Lithuania, Albania, Paraguay and Philippines were leading the list, however, they moved down the rating which was caused by the advancement in the area of other TPPR participant countries. Transparency Ukraine leads the TPPR rating in the benchmark indicator of Transparency in the evaluation covering the periods of 2016-2018 as well as 2019-2020. Georgia is holding one of the leading positions in both of the evaluations as well. In 2019-2020 Moldova moved to the top of the rating and held the second position with a score of 96.67%. Due to the advancement of these countries in the benchmark indicator of Transparency, Costa Rica moved from the second position in