TI – Georgia: 18 State Agencies do not Publish Simplified Procurement Contracts
According to a study published on 30 September by the civil society organization Transparency International-Georgia (TI – Georgia), 18 state agencies do not publish simplified procurement contracts.
According to the organization, among them are such important agencies as the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), the Government Administration, the Presidential Administration, the State Security Service of Georgia (SSG), and others.
“‘Hidden contracts,’ except for procurements related to state secrets, should not exist, as this significantly increases the risk of corruption,” the organization emphasized.
According to the study, the mentioned agencies stopped publishing procurement contracts at different times, with some of them having published only a few contracts in the past few years.
“The probability that these organizations will not sign contracts through simplified procurement is very low,” TI – Georgia stated. “The fact that contracts exist, but are not published, was confirmed by the publication of more than 100 contracts at once by MIA in October 2019.”
Per the organization, the proof that the mentioned agencies have simplified procurement contracts can be found in the SMP module of the electronic public procurement system, where approvals granted by the State Procurement Agency are published.
The study showed that between 2020-2022, the MIA requested approval to conduct 269 procurements through a simplified procedure. Out of these procurements, 53 were valued at more than GEL 100,000 (USD 35,339).
In the same time period, the Government Administration requested the right to carry out 19 simplified procurements, the SSG – 36 procurements, and the MIA’s LEPL Service Agency – 57 procurements.
TI – Georgia explained that public agencies used similar practices in recent years as well. For example, a 2017 study of the same content, which covered public procurements from 2015-2017, revealed that more than 50 purchasers had not published any simplified procurement contracts.
According to TI – Georgia’s explanation, following a letter sent by the State Procurement Agency in 2019, in October of the same year, a part of the contracts were uploaded to the system. However, the simplified procurement contracts of the Government Administration, the SSG, and the Intelligence Service of Georgia were still not published.
TI – Georgia wrote about the same issue in a 2020 study as well.
Recommendations
TI – Georgia called on the State Procurement Agency and procure organizations to pay closer attention to the issue of publishing simplified procurement contracts.
They also urged the introduction of an amendment to the Code of Administrative Offenses that would consider the violation of the standards of publicity in public procurement to be an offense.
Finally, the organization emphasized that “since there is a suspicion that public procurement contracts are not being published deliberately, there may be a criminal offense committed by specific entities, which should be of interest to the Prosecutor’s Office of Georgia.
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