site.btaDraft Revisions to Public Procurement Act Approved

Bulgaria's Council of Ministers on Wednesday approved a draft Act to Amend and Supplement the Public Procurement Act.

The revisions come into four groups: honouring commitments under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, amendments related to Bulgaria's preparation for accession to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, revisions improving the compatibility of the Act with EU law, and changes addressing problems identified in contracting entities' practice.

The measures proposed include reduction of non-competitive awards when procedures of negotiated procedure without prior publication by streamlining the definition of "exceptional circumstances" in the Supplementary Provisions of the Public Procurement Act. This will limit the application of such procedures as a result of poor planning and preparation on the part of the contracting entity. Penalties for breach of the award rules would be doubled.
 
It will be possible to require justification for abnormally low tenders and when just one or two tenders are submitted. In such cases, a comparison will me made with the estimated value as announced and, where this is inapplicable (e.g. unit price, discounts, surcharges, etc.), another objective base for comparison, announced in advance by the contracting entity in advance. 

Public contracting entities will be obliged to set environmental requirements when awarding supply procurements and service procurements above defined thresholds.

The provision of Article 117a of the Public Procurement Act is streamlined so as to address a conflicting interpretation regarding the possibility to modify public procurement contract price as a result of inflation, when no methodology has been approved for the subject-matter concerned. In such cases, the amount of the modification will be determined on a case-by-case basis, considering the evidence presented.

An expert consultative council with the Minister of Finance will be established as an advisory body on matters concerning control in the field of public procurement.