Chamber of Construction Industry of Serbia to Require Amendments to Law on Public Procurement Procedures

The Chamber of Construction Industry of Serbia will require the Law on Public Procurement Procedures to be amended, so that the procedure of the selection of the best bid would be more transparent, allowing all companies to compete on equal terms, said Goran Rodic, the chamber's vice-president.

He said that the terms of public procurement procedures need to be such that companies, given that they have the necessary references, are not excluded due to factors such as the income and other similarly limiting factors.

– At the recent discussions at several round tables, in which all the local and foreign companies which operate in Serbia and countries of the Western Balkans took part, it was agreed to form several commissions which will propose amendments to the Law on Public Procurement Procedures – Rodic told Beta.

He added that, at all these round tables, it had also been discussed how to connect construction companies for the purpose of realization of the upcoming big projects in the Western Balkans.

According to Rodic, among the projects to be realized in the region in the next ten years, which are worth tens of billions of euros, are the road and rail infrastructure, hydro and thermal power plants, and, in Serbia, the combined (intermodal) center for cargo transport in Belgrade, an integral development of the Morava basin and other rivers, the cleaning of the Danube and numerous environmental projects.

– The Law on Public Procurement Procedures is often not implemented transparently, and sometimes not at all, when a lex specialis is adopted instead, or the state makes an agreement, which is where the most corruption occurs – Rodic said.

He also points out that, when the state agrees a project with Chinese companies, it should also enable access to local ones, but not in the way where Chinese companies earn up to 50%, whereas most of the work is done by local subcontractors.

Rodic said that, in public procurement procedures, the priority should not be the lowest price, but the quality of works and the deadline period.

He estimates that final projects can only be carried out after valid examinations have been done and that the price of procurement should not vary by more than 10%, up or down, and that the amount of materials shouldn't vary by more than 3%, up or down, from the agreed amount.

Građevinska industrijska komora Srbije

Law on Public Procurement Procedures

Goran Rodić

public procurement

public procurement procedures

connecting construction companies