The access to information about public procurement in Moldova must be much easier, the head of the Journalistic Investigations Center Cornelia Cozonac said in a news conference at IPN.
According to Cornelia Cozonac, public procurement is one of the most vulnerable areas and this fact was proven by the government procurement audit carried out by the Audit Office. Within the project to monitor public procurement by 30 contracting authorities “Public money is my money too”, nongovernmental organizations and journalists met with a series of impediments in accessing information about the government procurement process.
“This prevents us from seeing the whole picture of the procurement process. All the information about procurement must be published on the websites of each of the state institutions that sign procurement contacts. These must provide information about the already signed contracts, name of the economic entity, value of the contract, amendments made to the contract and contract implementation level,” stated Cornelia Cozonac.
At the same time, the head of the Association for Efficient and Responsible Government Olesea Stamate said the Law on Public Procurement does not clearly regulate the access to information about procurement and contains rather ambiguous provisions. Such a conclusion was reached by a group of European experts who assess the public administration reform in the countries aspiring to enter the EU and who are in Moldova on an evaluation mission. These experts recommended that the access to such information should be much freer.
