Tabaku from the Stabilization and Association Committee: The government is awarding public tenders without competition

Democratic Party MP, Jorida Tabaku, from the EU-Albania Stabilization and Association Parliamentary Committee, harshly criticized the way the Albanian government is managing the public procurement process and European funds.

Tabaku said that public tenders are not conducted in a transparent and competitive manner through the electronic system, thus allowing a large volume of contracts without real competition.

“This is not in line with European Union legislation and in the last 12 months, the Council of Ministers has implemented this provision on several occasions.

Secondly, the public procurement law has not yet been revised in line with European standards and European Union legislation. Even when the opposition proposed a public procurement package to bring it closer to the best European standards, the government refused to implement it.

Public tenders are not conducted through an open, competitive and transparent competition through the electronic public procurement system, and this again leaves room for a very large volume of public tenders, which have increased significantly over the past year. However, the process remains excluded from the application of the electronic system.

There is a high number of cancellations in public procurement procedures. These also leave room for maneuvers, but also indicate a lack of transparency.

Again, we have a lack of transparency in the application of information technology in public procurement, and there are increased costs for public procurement, especially when the majority of tenders, at least 85% of them, are awarded at 99% of the estimated value. This shows a lack of leadership, a lack of policies, a methodology, but also the lack of approval of an approved electronic system.

Finally, the concentration of contracts in a few businesses without foreign competitors and, in fact, in violation of the agreement. Here colleagues have expressed their concerns regarding some contracts, for example, the one for the port of Vlora, which was awarded without international competition; also the port of Durres, this contract was again awarded without international competition.

Let's see, there are many European businesses that have been left out of this competition, and Albania wants to implement the Stabilization and Association Agreement. These are very important issues, because they are related to Chapter 5 of the group of chapters, Chapter 1 on public procurement, and also these are essential issues because the fight against corruption, at the end of the day, means protecting the rule of law.

What happened with the IPARD funds, with the agricultural funds in Albania, where a breach in the system revealed a corrupt scheme where public funds were abused, forced the European Commission to freeze 160 million euros of European taxpayers' money, which had been abused in Albania.

This raises a very big concern about how this process works, but also about the decentralization of EU funds in the future.

"If we want to take integration seriously, then we need to take care of reforms. Not reforms on paper, but reforms that change reality. This means restoring transparency, strengthening institutions and the state's monopoly on these contracts ," Tabaku declared.