Russia is ready to share state purchases with allied suppliers

ArmInfo. The Russian government on March 2 approved the bill on ratification of the protocol on rules and procedures for regulating public procurement between the CIS states, the spokesman for Prime Minister Natalia Timakova told "Kommersant".

To recall, they are connected by agreement on free trade zone (FTZ CIS) of 18 October 2011, which should give reciprocal access to public procurement to Union countries. The agreement on the establishment of the FTA, which was signed five years ago, pointed out that within three months the parties will negotiate to ensure access to public procurement. They were supposed to be completed within three years but in fact the protocol was signed only in June 2016 by the Prime Ministers of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan and Deputy Prime Minister of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (the representative of Ukraine did not participate in the meeting).

The document states that the legislation of the member countries should be brought into line with the provisions of the protocol before 1 January 2018. In particular, by this time the sides will have to make the transition to e-procurement format (including filing, summing up and conclusion of the contract). In the second phase (until 1 January 2019) will be already implemented the technology to ensure openness and transparency of the procurement and interoperability of technological platforms. In particular, each party shall select the site, through which will be carried out procurement, to run a single web portal for publishing data on the state order, as well as to publish the register of unfair suppliers.  The document will not apply to procurement contracts and the central banks, which constitute a state secret. And established limits on the software application (not more than 5% of the initial price of the contract) and contract execution (no more than 30%).

In Russia, however, currently, in accordance with the law of the contract system (44-FL) is fully realized in electronic form only one procurement procedure - the electronic auction. Earlier this year, the government submitted to the State Duma the amendments to the Federal Law to 44 full-scale transfer of procurement procedures in the electronic form. According to "Kommersant" source in the White House, "if provide the bill for electronic procedures by 44-FZ of March-April, then the terms are real, but if the time will extend until May and later, the requirements are unlikely not to succeed".

To note, single procedure for access to public procurement is not yet implemented in the framework of the Eurasian Economic Union. "It is unlikely that the signing of the protocol greatly change the situation with state purchases. Although, it is a big market. Only in EEU there is about $300 billion, there are numerous administrative barriers effecting it", said the deputy head of the Center for Integrative Studies EDB Mikhail Demidenko. Besides, according to him, is not enough to align the legislation, "it is necessary to unify the technological component: to create a single register of suppliers to enter the digital signature, but even in the EEU, this work has not yet been completed".

Director of the Institute of public procurement Andrey Khramkin believes that the fulfillment of all the above mentioned items is quite possible and feasible, since the technical possibilities for this already exist.  "The question rests on the political will at the level of state leadership". Experts remind that earlier the Russian Federation and Belarus have already organized the mutual recognition of electronic signatures necessary to participate in the procurement.