Record-high in terms of government spending proved to be the otherwise troubled 2013. Despite a change in the governments, the executive power and municipal administration lived quite better-off than they did in 2010, 2011 and 2012. Expenses incurred for works, supplies and services increased by over 33 percent – to nearly 7.96 billion levs, and actually exceeded pre-crisis levels. For comparison, in 2012 the awarded contracts in public procurement were for just under 6 billion levs. A year earlier, the amount was 5.8 billion levs, and for 2010 were reported the lowest levels – almost 4 billion. Along with the increase in expenditure, the number of detected irregularities in the procedures performed is increasing.
In 2013 some very interesting „jumps“ were observed in the number of signed contracts in the different months. While in previous periods contracts were concluded relatively evenly throughout the year, the last year had quite pronounced peaks in February, April, July and December. Which, of course, is not an accident – February was the last month of the rule of GERB, while April endash of the caretaker cabinet, and in July the current government actually started work. As for December, this is traditionally a month for signing huge amounts of contracts, especially between Christmas and the New Yearrquote s Eve.
Most funds have gone for contracts related to construction. Regardless of the details of a continuing decline in this sector, the state supported it by almost 4.1 billion levs – 40 % above the figure for 2012. In 2010 then, when the contracts for the construction of highways Trakia and Maritza were signed in this direction were spent only 1.42 billion levs. Thus, 2013 and spent many times more money on infrastructure than during the Cabinet of Boyko Borissov, who boasted mostly building roads, metro stations, sports halls and the like.
Another large share of the government spending went to supplies. Expenditures on fuel, airline tickets, stationery, computer equipment over the past 12 months exploded to over 2.9 billion levs. In the previous two years on such items about 2.3 billion lev was spent, and for 2010 the amount was 1.8 billion. The considerable extra spending in this area cannot be justified by the appreciation of the purchased goods, as inflation in the last three years is extremely low. Which just means that the state administration has seriously loosened its belt.
The same can be said for contracts for services such as cleaning, translation, litigation, audits, telephone calls… These needs of the civil servants cost to the budget over 1 billion levs. In 2012 the amount was 924 million levs, and in 2010 – 834 million levs.
Naturally, the high cost of public tenders can not be taken as a sign of economic revival. The increase in most cases is due to the EU funds, the effects of which became really visible to the general public only last year with the launch of new sections of highways. Thanks to funds from the OPs state and municipalities fill holes in their budgets and are able to spend more money for new projects. This is the way things are, at least in theory. But in practice the situation is slightly different. In most cases, ministers continue to delay payment of executed contracts, which puts businesses to the test. Judging by the latest data from the Finance Ministry, the debts of state to companies did not decrease, but even increased. For the past year, their growth was strong – from 111 million levs in September 2012 to 152 million levs on 30 September 2013, up by as much as 37 %. Unlike the central government, municipalities gradually reduced arrears and out of 176 million levs they already owed “ only“ 162 million levs over the same period.
Whether for the last three months of 2013 the government managed to melt their debts or whether increased them, we will realize at the end of February, when the expected annual aggregated data sets are to be announced. Until then, we can look at how transparently state money fill private pockets. It is now not a secret that from a means to combat corruption, public procurement degenerated into a main legal way to drain the treasury. Preliminary adjusted winners, shadow bargaining, discriminatory requirements, annexes for subsequent appreciation, lack of transparency… are just some of the techniques of the „proper“ distribution of state millions. Numerous checks of the Court and the Public Financial Inspection unambiguously show that the prevalence of these violations continues to increase. In over 60 % of the cases administrative errors have been established for government tenders and between 70 and 85% of the auctions conducted by municipal authorities the transgressions were related to attempted manipulation of the procedure itself. Concrete results for 2013 have not yet been announced, but there is no reason to expect a change. Moreover the distributed money this time was significantly more and temptations and opportunities for abuse were so, too.
One of the most common offences that contracting authorities make is a deliberate separation of public procurement in lots order to reduce the estimated value and eventually take on a simplified procedure endash that requires no auctions. Quite often the criteria for selecting these bids are mixed with evaluation criteria, introducing vague and imprecise methods for ranking, etc. Some reports of the evaluation and ranking of the candidates did not include any motivation reasoning, even though these are the documents to precisely explain why one company is selected and another one is turned down. Separately, there are quite a lot of discriminatory terms and unjustified restrictive requirements to the participants.
Besides such „tricks“ institutions use multiple other para-legal techniques to predict the outcome of tenders. The main loophole through which contenders are sifted and competition minimized are the minimum financial and technical requirements – the so-called selection criteria. Rules for determining these criteria are extremely „loose“ and allow all sorts of schemes to clear the way for a pre-selected favourite. With the prepared by Deputy Premier Daniela Bobeva draft amendment to the Law on Public Procurement most of these gaps are expected to be closed.
