Builders Association Suggests Ways of Making Public Procurement More Transparent
Lithuanian Builders Association (LBA) offered to take over the certification of construction companies and introduce advance certification. This would prevent organisations, organising public procurement, from adapting procurement criteria for specific companies. According to the LBA, this would take a year and 0.5 million euros.
<…> According to Lukas Laukaitis, head of Conresta constructions company, the key issue is that municipalities and public institutions define the assessment criteria for companies, although they lack the necessary competencies. Some requirements are often excessive and inadequate, creating a favourable opportunity to create specific conditions for specific companies that are intended to win the procurement. This reduces competition and burdens tenderers with unnecessary work.
“In order to see some substantial changes in the situation, we need to introduce advance accreditation for public procurement. The advance accreditation criteria should be determined by all interested parties: LBA, Ministry of the Environment and the PPO, while the regulated requirements should apply to all construction companies, participating at public procurement tenders, without exception. Such accreditation system is already applied at numerous countries of the world and is the only effective measure to reduce corruption.” said Mr Laukaitis.