ANALYSIS: The new public procurement legislation will enter into force in 2016

The new public procurement legislation which will be send to the Parliament in mid-October 2015 will enter into force at the beginning of 2016, according to the National Agency for Public Procurement (PPA). "There will be some profound changes, regarding the strengthening of building contracting capacity of local authorities, in which we aim the so-called «value for money» in the procurement field, and also accountability and legality. The new legislation should become applicable next year, now the experts working to the side rules. As regards the transposition of European directives into national law on public procurement, we can say that only the new laws will not solve all the problems of the system of public procurement, in terms of efficiency and rightness. There are high expectations from the new legislation. We have about 500 pages of proposals from consultations on conventional public procurement law, "said Roxana Mînzatu, president of NAPA. According to the Institute for Public Policies (IPP) the project which amend the public procurement law does not solve the problem of accountability in the selection of tenders on the basis of quality and not on the lowest price criteria, neither the related suspicions of corruption affecting procurement market in Romania. "The legislation which will modify the legal framework in public overestimates the level of proficiency and the readiness to assume responsibility on the officials involved in procurement and do not take into  account of certain characteristics of the procurement market in Romania, such as generalized suspicion of corruption", say the experts in public policies. The new vision in the field is characterized by greater consultation between contracting authorities and the private sector to be better known the market profile before the start of proceedings. "We appreciate that the new project puts accent on the skills in administration, depending on the extent and type of acquisition. Unfortunately, there are errors, for example by establishing as the ultimate goal of reform the  optimizing of working in the public field, when, in the opinion of IPP, the main concern should be the efficiency of  public resource allocation by encouraging sustainable procurement and restore confidence in the current system perceived as inefficient and corrupt", IPP officials say.