On 27 June, representatives of the Armenian Business Coalition and Armenian Lawyers’ Association had a working meeting at the RA Ministry of Finance within the framework of the EU-funded “Capacity Building of the Armenian Business Coalition” sub-grant project implemented in the scope of the EU funded “Commitment to Constructive Dialogue” project. The meeting focused on public procurement, in particular, the discussion of the proposals made by the Armenian Business Coalition and the Armenian Lawyers’ Association related to public procurement. The package of proposals was drawn up in a review of the 16 April discussion entitled “Business and Civil Society Participation in Implementing Procurement Legislation Reforms”.
The meeting took place in a constructive atmosphere and was quite effective. Out of the 24 submitted proposals, 2 are already at the stage of implementation, 9 are acceptable, 6 need additional inter-departmental discussions, 2 are out of the scope of discussion, and 4 are unacceptable.
The following from the list of recommendations are noteworthy: introduction of mechanisms to combat abuses in the process of compiling the state procurement specifications, including the definition of the public expertise procedure and definition of main technical specifications standards implementation of mechanisms in case of presenting an obviously unreasonable low price proposal, allocation of certain amounts from the RA state budget for grant projects, aimed at raising awareness of SMEs and investigating journalists and non-governmental organizations capacity development in public procurement, and improvement of search filters on public procurement sites, and so on.
The following recommendations are generally acceptable but need further consideration: introducing a rating system of procurement participants based on the quality of contract performance, corporate governance system and anti-corruption procedures in the company, and preferring businesses that have higher scores on equal terms according to that system, as well as provide for certain quotas for SMEs and in case of equal conditions give preference to SMEs.
Notably, the suggestions were derived from the reports received through BizProtect website for anonymous reporting, which is operated by the Armenian Lawyers’ Association.
The “Commitment to Constructive Dialogue” project is implemented with the financial support of the European Union by a consortium of civil society organisations, which are the “Armenian Lawyers’ Association” NGO, Agora Central Europe o.p.s (an NGO from the Czech Republic), the “Armenian Center for Democratic Education-CIVITAS” NGO, the “International Center for Human Development” Public Organisation, the “SME Cooperation Association” NGO and the Union of Communities of Armenia.
The overall objective of the project is to enhance the influence of CSOs and their coalitions (networks) on the public policy process. This will enable the organisations (that already work in target coalitions) to gain new resources, unite civil society experts and encourage them to participate in the formation of local and national policy agenda, identify the common problems and priorities and to apply to the government with constructive and strategic policy initiatives.
In the scope of the project, sub-grants have been provided to CSOs and CSO coalitions, aiming at public policy development and achieving tangible results in the 9 target sectors: justice, human rights, public finance management, business, education, social sector: social inclusion of children with disabilities, agriculture, economy, energy.
