On the 17th of December, 2020 IDFI delivered an information session for the civic activists, advocates, and public servants of Kyrgyzstan. The aim of the session was to inform the participants on the external assessment of Public procurement legislation in Kyrgyzstan and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the system. The session also aimed at facilitating the discussion on the necessary steps aimed at strengthening good governance in the area of public procurement in Kyrgyzstan.
During the session, IDFI introduced to the audience the methodology of TPPR, the evaluation of Kyrgyzstan, the best and the worst-performing benchmark indicators and the position of Kyrgyzstan in the Transparent public procurement rating. IDFI also discussed the commitments of Kyrgyzstan in the direction of Public Procurement based on the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Action Plan 2018-2020 and their possible effect on the system of public procurement in the country.
Kyrgyzstan joined the TPPR Network in 2018. The TPPR evaluation of Kyrgyzstan was conducted by the Forum on Official Development Assistance (FODA) in 2018. The evaluation covers the period of 2016-2018. The overall evaluation of PPL in Kyrgyzstan equals to 65.96%. The highest level of legislative transparency and accountability was demonstrated at the pre-tendering phase -69.44%. In contrast, the post-tendering stage was evaluated with the lowest score of 31.54%. As for the benchmark indicators, Kyrgyzstan demonstrated the best performance in regards to the Uniformity of Legislative Framework, with 82.14%. The worst performing benchmark indicator on the other hand was Transparency with the score of 33.89%.
Based on the evaluation of Kyrgyzstan conducted in 2018 the following factors are the ones negatively affecting the score of PPL in the country:
- The legislation does not guarantee sufficient time for tender candidates to prepare and submit tender applications;
- Right to review is applicable to tender participants/potential suppliers only and it does not extend to wider stakeholders;
- The non-competitive procedure is not necessarily reasoned and made public by the procuring entity;
- PPL does not include the procedures for the acceptance of final products or processing of final payments, nor does it include any provisions on modifying contracts;
- PPL legislation does not guarantee access to procurement contracts, contract amendments, contract performance information, payment receipts, inspection and quality control reports;
- Access to most of the tender-related documents is only available in a non-machine-readable format.
Within the auspices of the OGP Action Plan 2018-2020 Kyrgyzstan has undertaken important commitments in the direction of public procurement. Namely commitment 5.8 of the action plan aims at:
- Expanding the list of data subject to mandatory publication in the open format;
- Disclosing full text of contracts and information on contract terms performance;
- Facilitating monitoring of public procurement, including through filing complaints to the Independent Body.
In order to implement the OGP commitment, Kyrgyzstan undertook the obligation to amend the legislation and improve the web portal in order to limit the use of non-competitive procurement methods, increase the efficiency of the public procurement and reduce corruption.
During the session, IDFI facilitated discussion on the possible impact of the OGP commitments on the TPPR evaluation of Kyrgyzstan. IDFI hopes that the Kyrgyz republic will continue to show demonstrated political will to improve public procurement transparency in the country and address all shortcomings posing the threat of corrupt practices in the process of public procurement.