“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Corruption has a corrosive impact on both market opportunities and the broader business climate. It stifles economic growth and sustainable development, distorts prices, undermines legal and judicial systems, and deters foreign investments. It is the main problem in business transactions and economic development projects.
Public procurement system is particularly prone to “large corruption” since the state is still a dominant buyer at the Serbian market. According to the World Bank estimation, public procurement value in Serbia in 2002 was 1,453 billion US dollars that was 24% of total public expenditures or 11% GDP.
In the last decade, corruption in public procurement was particularly severe and widespread at the local level. Calls for submitting proposals were formal and not available to all interested parties, but to selected privileged firms, deadlines for submitting proposals were too short giving an advantage to certain bidders informed in advance etc. A low level of skills at purchaser has as well as at the bidders’ side was one of the key factors that enabled corruption to flourish. The public procurement practice was particularly far from the EU principles at the local level.
Public Procurement Law (PPL) was adopted in Serbia in July 2002, coming into the effect for the major purchasing entities immediately, while its implementation for the purchasers on the local level (municipalities plus local utilities companies) started from January 2003. The Law established the EU principles of public procurement for the first time in Serbia.

The effective implementation of the PPL critically depends on an efficient procedure for protection of bidders’ rights. As a part of this, it is important to introduce representatives of the bidders, particularly from the small and medium size enterprises (SME), with the appealing procedure.

The procedure consists of the following two phases:
a) An appeal procedure of first degree, where purchaser decides on an appeal of the bidder, and
b) A second-degree procedure, when the Commission for the Protection of Bidders Rights is making a final decision if the tender is regular or not.
Transparency Serbia would focus on training of bidders in protection of their rights in order to make them capable to control effectively the tenders they participate in. Moreover, an efficient monitoring and control critically depend on political support coming from the top. In order to get this support, TS plans to introduce politicians and decision makers with potential benefits that well, timely planned public procurement can bring to them on one side and harms that can be made to them, such is loss of credibility in their local communities due to poor and corrupt procurement practice. Next important factor of an efficient monitoring and control is civil society, particularly media. During the last year, public procurement issue was highly covered by all relevant media in Serbia.
It is also very important to highlight the fact that this project will be carried out mostly in the field, in the local municipalities.

Cities and municipalities, where the seminars and workshops are going to take place, are divided into four sections (according to their geographic position):

GROUP A – City of Belgrade including following municipalities: Cukarica, Zemun, Novi Beograd, Zvezdara, Vozdovac, Grocka, Mladenovac, Stari Grad, Vracar and Savski venac;

GROUP B – Section North (Vojvodina) with City of Novi Sad and following municipalities: Kikinda, Zrenjanin, Vrsac, Pancevo, Kovin, Novi Knezevac, Apatin and Sombor;

GROUP C –. Section Center, with City of Kragujevac and following municipalities: Kraljevo, Uzice, Pozega, Bajina Basta, Krusevac and Aleksandrovac

GROUP D –. Section South, with City of Nis and following municipalities: Leskovac, Vranje, Pirot, Prokuplje, Kursumlija and Dimitrovgrad
There are 33 municipalities in total.