The Anti-Corruption Agency regularly monitors and conducts studies for conflicts of interest in public procurement from state customers and for signs of corruption.

The studies showed that public procurement in the construction sector was artificially divided into parts, in some public procurements the same bidders repeatedly won, some customers did not place public procurement announcements in the construction sector on the special platform ‘tender.mc.uz’ of the Transparent Construction Data Center, as well as number of other violations.

In particular, Article 59 of the Law of the Republic of Uzbekistan ‘On Public Procurement’ provides for the placement by a state customer of an announcement on selection in the electronic system of a special data portal, as well as the placement of the following data:

• information specified in the announcement of the selection;
• information about the currency, payment procedure and terms of delivery used to form settlements with contractors;
• requirements for the mandatory proposal preparation for participation in the selection in the state language and, as necessary, in other languages;
• procedure, start and end dates for providing participants with explanations of the provisions of the procurement documentation for selection;
• Terms of Reference;
• evaluation criteria and procedure for consideration of proposals;
• requirements for the mandatory submission by the selection participants of an application for the prevention of corruption manifestations.

In paragraph 3 of the Provision ‘On the organization and implementation of electronic public procurement in the construction sector’, approved by the Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Uzbekistan of January 31, 2022, it is noted that public procurement of state customers in the construction sector, the cost of which exceeds 6,000 times the reference calculation value (2,500 in the previous editions) under one contract are carried out in electronic form through a special information portal ‘tender.mc.uz’.

In accordance with paragraph 125-18 of the Provision ‘On the procedure for organizing and conducting procurement procedures’, registered by the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Uzbekistan, when conducting an electronic tender:

• for the technical and price parts of the tender offer, a relative value is established, depending on the importance of evaluating each part of the offer to meet the needs of the customer in goods (works, services);
• the tender documentation may establish threshold values (marked points), and the participant who does not pass them is removed from the electronic tender (bidding list);
• for the technical part of the tender offer, evaluation criteria are determined based on quantitative indicators (number of qualified specialists, delivery time, length of service, etc.) or expert evaluation;
• When using the scoring method, a relative value can be determined for each criterion for evaluating the technical part of the tender. When using the lowest price method, criteria may be determined to identify the compliance or non-compliance of the participant’s bid with the requirements established by the tender documentation.

However, in the process of public procurement, state customers systematically violate the above requirements of the law. In particular,

• Public procurement of the Navoi Thermal Power Station for the construction of a new checkpoint at the station in the amount of 4.9 billion soums on the electronic special portal ‘etender.uz’;
• Public procurement by order of the Ferghana District Unitary Enterprise of Road Sector for the construction of the building of the 476th road department of the enterprise in the amount of 1.6 billion soums;

In addition, during the tender on the special electronic portal ‘etender.uz’ by the Medical Association of Kattakurgan District for the supply of food and hot meals in the amount of 228.0 million soums, gross violations were detected of the requirements of the Law ‘On Public Procurement’ and the Provision ‘On the procedure for the provision of outsourcing services in organizations subordinated to the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Uzbekistan’, approved by the Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of January 10, 2020.

Following the detected violations, relevant statutory notices have been submitted to the state customers and the cancellation of the announcements ensured.

Press Office

The Anti-Corruption Agency