The political vacuum at the top of the state opens many possibilities for under-the-counter decisions and signing contracts for millions of dollars. This is because the work of ministries does not stop even when their heads are being changed. Procurement procedures are going and in the coming weeks dozens of contracts will have to be inked. Can hardly be expected, however that the Government will be monitoring these transactions as it will have specific tasks to do and the auctions will rather run as a standard administrative process. A number of key actions – such as signing contracts, are often delegated to the secretaries of the departments, who according to the Unified classifier of administrative positions are the highest in the hierarchy of government employees. Their respective service contracts are permanent and can not be terminated for political reasons.
A total of 202 procurement procedures in various departments are nearing the finish line – offers of the candidates are being considered and are only waiting to be ranked. Of these, 70 have been buried in litigation for years and there is no chance their fate to be decided now. But others are perfectly regular and move according to established rules.
The most competitions that are nearing closure, 27, are at the Ministry of Agriculture and Food as well as the Defence Ministry. Those of the former Office of Miroslav Naydenov are mostly related to the promotion of rural development programmes. Most attractive are the ones for organizing and conducting information campaign for the 8-month-guarantee scheme, whose budget is 1.8 million levs. Very lucrative is the procedure for publishing materials in national dailies, weeklies and regional publications. It has a budget of 1.47 million levs without VAT and has been on the table since September 2012, although in the register of Commission for protection of the competition there is no evidence of complaints against it. So no wonder if right now the Ministry finally gets to the signing of contracts. Another 600 thousand levs are waiting to be taken for a new set of billboards to inform the general public of the existence of the rural programme. A similar sum is provided for the development and transmission of specialized ad spots in regional radio stations and, separately, another 800 thousand levs are planned for TV commercials.
The pending orders continue with a set of 540 thousand levs to be spent on production and distribution through national daily papers. In a few days as it must be clear who is going to organize a competition for the title Farmer 2012, Young Farmer of 2012 Organic Producer of the Year and Animal Breeder of the Year. The organization of these events will swallow 240 thousand levs. Soon a special company will be hired to analyze what the effectiveness of these and other informational and promotional campaigns has been in 2012 and 2013, as well as to explore the functionality of the website of the programme for rural areas. The remuneration for this work was fixed at 120 thousand levs.
During the caretaker government it will be decided also who will provide the air tickets for the Ministry of Agriculture over the next 24 months. The planned budget for this purpose is 2.4 million levs and it is not so unimportant a matter which company will sign the contract.
In Defence Ministry there are no orders for ads, but in contrast, the tenders are dominated by those for services such as repair and maintenance of buildings and equipment. It is to be decided who will serve the COUGAR helicopters in the next seven years against a financial reward of 22 million levs without VAT. Nearly half a million levs will be given for dock repairs of the frigate Smeli. Businesses to provide maintenance of takeoff and landing runways, taxiways and adjoining infrastructure of the Graf Ignatievo will also be selected.
The BANKER
