Information about public procurement became more accessible at local level

24.11.2015 12:32
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2 minute(s)

The local public authorities more openly provide information about the public procurement process than the central authorities, Olesea Stamate, who heads the Association for Efficient and Responsible Government, and Cornelia Cozonac, head of the Journalistic Investigations Center, said in a news conference at IPN. According to them, at the local level 90% of the 30 institutions monitored within a project provided information, while at the central level – only 30%.

“The local authorities were more receptive and easier provided access to information. The level of responsibility of the central authorities is very low,” said Olesea Stamate, noting that the Law on Public Procurement provides that the contracting public authorities are obliged to publish the annual or quarterly procurement plan on their websites, but this is not done.

The monitoring of the government procurement process is a key subject of the project “Public money is my money too”. This is a two-year project to monitor public procurement by 30 contracting authorities, ten of which are central ones, while 20 are local ones. These are monitored by ten NGOs.

“Government procurement is a very important area because it involves money collected from the taxes we pay and we thus have the right to monitor and follow it so as to see how it is used when the state signs contracts with economic entities,” stated Cornelia Cozonac.

According to her, there are yet many obstacles that hamper the obtaining of information about government procurement and this prevents the people from seeing the general picture, from contracting up to implementation.

“It is important to monitor every stage of the government procurement process. Otherwise, we will lose the track of this money. Where the access to information about this process is hampered, something is evidently hidden and it is not only about the commercial secret,” said Cornelia Cozonac.

The project is implemented by the Association for Efficient and Responsible Government (AGER), in partnership with the Journalistic Investigations Center, and is financed by the European Union.