The federal ministries have received a list of goods that they must now buy only through virtual tenders.
On Thursday, the government presented a list of products that the federal ministries and agencies will only be allowed to purchase through e-tenders starting next year. The list featured 23 groups of goods ranging from food and printing and medical products to office furniture and cars. The executive order was signed by Vladimir Putin and is set to be effective from January 1 to June 30, 2010. Tenders will be held on three trading floors: Sberbank - Automated Trading System, Uniform Electronic Trading Floor (Moscow) and the Tatarstan State Contract, Investment and Interregional Relations Agency.
Starting from July 1, 2010 the federal ministries will have to purchase all the goods though these tenders, and the regional and municipal governmental bodies will switch to this system in 2011.
"This measure is clearly designed to combat political corruption, since it will rule out the chance any personal communication between the buyers and suppliers," Putin said about the executive order.
Mikhail Yevrayev, head of the State Contract Control Administration of the Federal Antimonopoly Service, explained to Gazeta that there is one fundamental difference between ordinary and electronic tenders: the latter are completely confidential.
"The suppliers can't collude with one another, and the client can't influence them in any way, because it doesn't even know what companies will be taking part in the tender," Yevrayev said.
Specialists are doubtful that e-tenders will contribute to the fight against political corruption, however. "As long as there is a human factor involved, e-tenders can't eliminate the possibility of collusion between suppliers or between suppliers and clients. Our latest monitoring data shows that only one or two suppliers have reduced their prices," said Irina Kuznetsova, director of the Purchase and Sale Management Institute at the Higher School of Economics.
Another reason to support e-tenders, as Vladimir Putin pointed out, is that they will save substantial amounts of budget money. "Practice clearly demonstrates all of this," the prime minister said.
At present, the price that suppliers are willing to accept for the products is the key factor in e-tenders. Yet, if the government doesn't change the system for defining these prices, it will hardly save any money.
"Now the client must declare the maximum price he is willing to pay before its order is published. Imagine a situation in which you go to a market and say to the sellers, "I can pay 30 roubles for a litre of milk." What will you end up paying for that milk? 29.9 roubles, if you are lucky. This practice can easily be changed, for example, by asking clients to declare the bid price during the tender and not beforehand, so that suppliers won't be able to surge their prices," Irina Kuznetsova explained.
Neither can e-tenders prevent officials from buying highly expensive foreign cars, furniture and other luxury goods with budget money and, more importantly, on a legal basis.
"Officials cannot be allowed to buy gold beds or cars worth several billion roubles. Such possibilities should be nipped in the bud," Yevrayev said.
Kseniya Batanova