The Ministry of Finance, in the process of reforming public procurement and property trading, announced possible infrastructural changes in the system of electronic trading platforms (ETP) operating in these areas. The topic was discussed yesterday in the Federation Council, it was about revising the criteria for admitting sites to public procurement auctions. The reason for the discussion was the complaints of the operators of the electronic trading platform, they are afraid of being suspended from work with the state order due to strict selection criteria. The Ministry of Finance notes that they will regulate the ETP after the basic legislation is amended and the analysis of its results.
Yesterday, at the Federation Council, the Ministry of Finance announced its readiness to revise the requirements for electronic trading platforms allowed to place government orders and conduct auctions in state property under the law on public procurement (FZ-44). The reason was the appeal of sites that risk not passing the selection in 2022, we are talking, among other things, about the requirements for operators to conduct at least 5% of state purchases and 5% of purchases of state-owned companies from SMEs at their sites. Now only three sites out of eight meet the criteria, said the head of the Russian Auction House Andrey Stepanenko yesterday.
Uniform requirements for ETP operators were introduced in 2018, it was assumed that this would reduce abuse and increase the transparency of work with government orders. “According to the Ministry of Finance, this is the most correct perspective of legislative regulation of all tenders, ensuring not only a single pool and traceability of work on the electronic trading platform, but also a decrease in the financial burden on procurement participants,” Tatyana Demidova, head of the profile department, said yesterday. At the same time, according to her, in the conditions of COVID-19, many purchases were carried out without electronic bidding, from a single supplier, which affected the operation of the ETP. Because of this, the Ministry of Finance has already postponed the verification of sites for compliance with the requirements from 2021 to 2022. Market participants, however, propose to soften the criteria themselves, in particular to take into account the results of not only state purchases, but also state property auctions.
The Finance Ministry explained to Kommersant that the department “is considering the possibility of easing existing requirements, including taking into account the ongoing reform in the sale of property.” However, as Tatyana Demidova explained yesterday, changes are possible only after reforms of the property block and procurement legislation. Recall that the latter is associated with the optimization of procedures and digitalization of all stages of procurement, after numerous approvals, the “optimization” draft of the Ministry of Finance passed its first reading in March.
The Ministry of Finance began to address the issue of ineffective and non-transparent property sales in 2020, after the transfer of the Federal Property Management Agency to it. The department intends to automate trading by analogy with purchases on the basis of the Federal Treasury. At the same time, the FAS is preparing a project on the unification of trades; it has not been possible to agree on it for more than ten years (see Kommersant of April 28). Analysis of data on auctions for various types of property will allow adjusting the requirements, noted in the Ministry of Finance.
As Deputy Head of the Federal Treasury Anna Katamadze, who oversees purchases, explained yesterday, the state of the torgi.gov.ru system, which the Treasury recently received, does not yet allow taking into account the criteria for property sales, changes are also needed in regulation due to the preservation of the paper format of a number of procedures. “It will be possible to objectively take into account the criteria for the selection or preservation of sites when these procedures become unified,” adds Ms. Katamadze. In general, according to her, the department supports the idea of summarizing purchases and sales of state property. Another possible development of regulation, according to the official, may be a mechanism for random selection of the site, it will ensure uniformity of purchases on the electronic trading platform and minimize abuse.
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