On June 18, 2018, following an invitation by the World Bank office in Bulgaria, AmCham representatives, including Zlatina Ruseva-Savova, Board member and Co-chair of the Public Procurement and EU Funding Advisory Committee, Radoslav Rizov, Telelink and Pavlin Stoyanoff, Deloitte Legal, took part in a discussion focused on the public procurement sector in the country.

The participants had the opportunity to share their views on the issues and challenges that companies face while participating in procurement processes and to provide recommendations for achieving more effective and transparent procurement sector in the country.

Among the issues discussed were

• the signing of European Single Procurement Document (ESPD);
• the prevailing practice of using the lowest-price criterion rather than the most-economically advantageous one as a main criterion for awarding procurement contracts;
• the lack of or insufficient capacity within contracting authorities;
• the quality of technical specifications and procurement contracts;
• and the rare use of preliminary market consultations, competitive dialogue and competitive procedure with negotiation.

AmCham representatives proposed to organize a joint event with the World Bank project team and the Public Procurement Agency (late September/early October 2018) in order to present their joint project before AmCham members as companies will have the opportunities to share their experience with public procurement processes in the country and provide expert input to the World Bank final report.

Source: AmCham Bulgaria