Public Procurement Law comes into effect on April 1st

Public Procurement Law will become applicable April 1st, this legal act has been designed very well, but its application is the most significant, Director of the Public Procurement Office Predrag Jovanovic said Thursday.

- We do not know exactly how big savings will be brought by this law, but the better its application, the bigger its effects, which are mainly reflected in the cost-efficient spending of taxpayers' money - Jovanovic told Tanjug news agency.

He pointed out at the conference "Public Procurements - Presentation of the European Training Model" that it was necessary to strengthen the capacities of both Public Procurement Agency and Public Procurement Office in order to make the application of the Public Procurement Law as efficient as possible.

Investment in public procurements in developed countries is considered a kind of investment that provides high returns, Jovanovic explained.

- We already have 1,500 certified public procurement officers, which makes us leaders in the region, but it is crucial to continue to improve our capacities so the new Public Procurement Law, which is much more complex than the previous one, could be applied in a quality manner - he noted.

Head of the Section for European Integration and Economic Issues in the EU Delegation to Serbia, Frek Janmat, stressed that the adoption of the new Public Procurement Law was an important step in Serbia's EU integration process.

He warned that the situation in that field in Serbia was quite worrying as the number of bidders dropped to only two or three in 2012, which was bad for competition.