site.btaPM Orders Major Public Procurements Stopped, to Be Contracted under New Law

PM Orders Major Public Procurements Stopped, to Be Contracted under New Law

Sofia, February 17 (BTA) - Prime Minister Boyko Borissov has ordered that all major public procurements be stopped and be contracted under a recently adopted new law. This was announced to the press by Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov after the weekly meeting of the government on Wednesday. "The aim is to dispel all suspicions about something intransparent or a backstage deal which will result in the spending of large amounts of public resources," said Goranov.

Among the cancelled public procurements he mentioned is one for construction of forestry infrastrcture and roads for a total of 95 million leva in the territory of the Southwestern State Forestry Company.

A debate is ongoing on the possible halting of several framework orders, and the idea is that all large procurements that might be of broad public interest, be re-contracted in keeping with the new law with clear and transparent rules, so as to eliminate all suspicions in respect of the transparency of such contracts, to make sure that the public interest be protected and achieve the best price for the available resources, said the Finance Minister.

He also said that several large public procurements in Varna "will be discussed".

A large public procurement contract for the production of IDs will be "structured in a new way", said the Minister. He explained that lots of equipment is about to be made redundant at the central bank's printing works and a new company will be set up, first under the Finance Minister and then under the Interior Ministry, to use these assets and optimize the cost of production of new IDs.

The announcement about the cancelled public procurements comes a couple of days after the Prime Minister ordered that a contract for construction of extensions of the Hemus Motorway be put on halt, both due to underfunding and to doubts in the public that the contracts were awarded transparently and that the public interest was protected.

The Finance Minister said Wednesday that he personally was in favour of ordering a re-design of the Hemus extensions but this will take time.

The high price of the offer which won the tender, is due to many tunnels and bridges, which pushes up the cost of construction. "Unortunately, a re-design will take at least two years which will delay badly the project," Goranov commented.