Bidders Advice Support

Bidders advice support is one of the most important supports to regularity of public procurements. System of protection of rights in Serbia is regulated by Public Procurement Law and is designed as two-stage. It means that, in first stage, bidder complaints to procurement entity, then if procurement entity denies its demand, bidder files complaint to Commission for Protection of Bidders Rights, as a second stage organ which can decide to annul procedure totally or partially or to dismiss bidder's complaint. Commission's decision is final and no complaint nor administrative dispute can be brought against it.

Understanding the significance of protection of rights for establishing credible and efficient system of public procurements, Transparency Serbia (TS), from April 2004 – April 2005., implemented project „Efficient Public Procurements“ whose key component was training of bidders across Serbia in the area of protection of rights in process of public procurements.

One of the basic findings of this project was that level of knowledge on protection of rights procedure was relatively low with bidders. As a consequence, for insufficient knowledge of rules and procedures, bidders miss to seek protection of their rights or file demands for protection of their rights which have formal failures because of which Commission rejects them. At the same time, body to which bidders could turn to for consultation about concrete cases of protection of rights doesn't exist, that kind of advices provide only lawyers' offices for commercial compensation. Obvious problem is that smaller bidders often renounce from protection of their rights because they have to pay services of layers' offices to clear dilemmas, as well as the amount of 40.000 dinars tax that should be paid in order to start the process of protection of rights.

Because of that Transparency Serbia, in cooperation with Mission of OSCE in Serbia , started the project that has for goal offering free advisory help to bidders in the area of protection of rights. Bidders can turn to experts of Transparency Serbia for advises at the phone number 0800-081-081 from 11 until 15 every working day, beginning from October 1 st 2007 .

Help of TS will be strictly advisory and will not include writing of demands for protection of rights. Opinions and views of TS experts do not necessarily represent donor's (OEBS) or Commission for protection of rights opinions.

Planned period of providing advisory help is ten months. After that, representative cases will be gathered and published in publication: „Cases of protection of rights in procedures of public procurements“. Results of project, as well as publication will be presented at final conference: „Towards better protection of rights in the process of public procurements“.

Project financed by Mission of OEBS to Serbia

Efficient public procurements

Press-clipping

Public Procurement Law