The draft law on procurement in the energy, water, transport and postal services areas, developed by the Ministry of Finance, is subjected to public debates. Minister Natalia Gavrilița specifies that the draft transposes a European directive regulating purchases in the utilities area. "We specifically regulate utility purchases because these sectors are natural monopolies, and are not within the purview of the competition law like other sectors," said Natalia Gavrilița, during a round of debates.

The provisions of the respective draft law will apply to the sectoral procurement contracts with an estimated value, excluding the value added tax, that is equal to or greater than eight thousand lei - for products and services contracts, as well as solution competitions, two millions of lei - for works contracts and one million lei - for procurement contracts for social services and other specific services. Procurement contracts with an estimated value that does not exceed the mentioned thresholds are regulated by the Government. The scope of this law does not include services of general interest, having no economic specifics.

Vadim Turcan, a specialist in public procurement at UTM, was dissatisfied with the lack of an electronic procurement system. Also, he says, it is not specified very clearly whether the procedures that will be carried out according to this law will be published in the Public Procurement Registry. The potential list of contracting authorities that will fall under this law is not mentioned either. Deputy Director of the Public Procurement Agency, Ghenadie Grib, has pointed out that the instruments by which this law will be implemented are still to be discussed. Proposals will be collected and thresholds could be revised.

Participants in the discussions asked for the appeal solving term to be minimized. According to them, within a project, there can be several tenders, and if at a certain stage an appeal intervenes, its handling requires time and the bidders may lose the tender. Currently the time for solving appeals is of 20 working days.

Viorel Rusu, an expert with the Congress of Local Public Authorities of Moldova, asked if the law took into account the situation at local level, if the administrative burden of these regulations at local level was calculated. Ghenadie Grib, deputy director of the Public Procurement Agency, replied that over 90% of purchases at local level have a value lower than the thresholds indicated in the law.

Diana Enache, a representative of the civil society, says that, analysing the draft law, she found that there are no provisions regulating the participation of civil society in the working group for public procurement of utilities.

The Ministry of Finance is expecting any proposals to improve the draft law, in written form, by the end of this week.