Trust in public procurement system dropping – Citizens increasingly interested in how public money is spent

Slightly under two fifths of the citizens are familiar with the public procurement system in Serbia, which is at the same level as in previous years, but compared to the previous wave of measuring, the number of those expressing distrust about the public procurement procedures being carried out in a just and transparent way has increased nearly 20%, while at the same time, the interest in gaining insight into the spending of public funds is growing, as shown by the most recent NALED research about the positions of the citizens, bidders and procuring entities for 2024/25.

According to the research carried out by the NALED for the needs of the Responsible Governance Project with the support of the Swedish government, the trust in the system has slightly dropped among both bidders and procuring entities, but the majority of them still believe that public procurement procedures are carried out in line with the law.

– In the past four years, the surveyed bidders took part in 32 procedures on average, whereby some criterion other than the lowest price was used in seven of them. Increasingly more participants support the use of quality as the main criterion in public procurement procedures, and that share has grown from 60% to 78%. The latest report of the Public Procurement Office confirms that changes are happening in practice too, considering that the share of the procedures in which the price was not the only criterion for the awarding of the contract has doubled within a year - from 4.5% to close to 10%. That confirms to us that the measures we initiated are starting to produce results and that we should continue down that path – says the director of the Good Governance at the NALED, Ana Ilic.

Since January 1 last year, two adopted recommendations from the NALED’s Grey Book related to the implementation of green and quality criteria in certain public procurement procedures have come into effect. When procuring architectural, engineering or advisory services, as well as translation or computer program development services, the procuring entity may not set the price as the only criterion for the awarding of the contract, and when procuring photocopier machines, computer and office equipment, air-conditioning devices and cleaning products, the use of environmental criteria is mandatory.

– With the support of the Swedish government, we continue to advocate a gradual increase in the number of cases where the implementation of environmental criteria would be mandatory, because we thereby create an additional incentive for the economy to invest in the decarbonization of supply chains and strengthening the competitiveness of bidders, but also stimulate competition in public procurement procedures themselves. More than 40% of the procuring entities emphasize a lack of bids as the biggest challenge in public procurement procedures, which points to the need for the further strengthening of trust and securing of fair conditions for all participants, because a lack of trust in the system is still present among bidders. That is why we also advocate the improvement of supervision over the implementation of procedures, because, as the European Commission also warns in its latest report, the existing weaknesses might lead to failure to penalize the irregularities – concludes Ilic.

The NALED research has also shown that nearly all the procuring entities say that the contracts in the past four years have been implemented within the agreed deadline, in line with the agreed price and at satisfactory quality, and 77% of them believe that quality control results should be publicly available for each bidder. A similar percentage supports the idea of the results being used in awarding contracts in subsequent procurement procedures.

As in the previous wave of research, most citizens (83%) believe that corruption is present in public procurement procedures. More than a half of the bidders and slightly more than two fifths of the procuring entities believe the same. Construction of infrastructure is recognized as the field in which corruption is the most widespread - more than a half of the citizens believe this, a third of the procuring entities has the same opinion, as well as slightly over a fifth of the bidders.

When it comes to information about public procurement procedures they get, the citizens trust non-governmental organizations (28%) and the media (26%) the most, followed by the ministries (24%), whereas each sixth citizen had trust in the local self-governments and public enterprises.

NALED Beograd

NALED

Public Procurement Office

Ana Ilić

trust of citizens in public procurement procedures

corruption in public procurement procedures