Technical Cooperation to Improve Transparency
and Accountability of Public Procurement
in Transition Countries
MICHEL NUSSBAUMER
Head of Legal Transition Programme, EBRD
‘UNCITRAL standards for transparency, accountability and good governance’
New York, 17 July 2014
The EBRD Legal Transition Programme
Objective:
“Improve the investment climate in the
Bank’s countries of operations by helping
create an investor-friendly, transparent
and predictable legal environment”
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Law reform and economic transition progress together
in transition countries
Slovak Rep
4
Estonia
Hungary
State of Economic Transition
Poland
FYR
Macedonia
Armenia
Albania
Mongolia
3
Latvia
Slovenia
Turkey
Montenegro
Tajikistan
Azerbaijan
Bosnia & Herz
Uzbekistan
2
Belarus
Ukraine
Georgia
Lithuania
Russia
Moldova
Croatia
Bulgaria
Romania
Kazahkstan
Serbia
Krygyz Rep
Turkmenistan
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State of core commercial and financial law s
 Source: EBRD Transition Report 2013
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Transparency safeguards in public procurement laws
in transition countries
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How well do national laws guarantee transparency and
accountability of public procurement? (2010 assessment)
EU Member States
in the EBRD region
Eastern Europe,
including Russia and
Georgia
5
Sub-standard policies on transparency and accountability in
the CIS region and North Africa (2010 assessment)
CENTRAL
ASIA
SEMED
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Full EBRD assessment is available at
http://ppl-report.ebrd.com
Full EBRD assessment
is available at:
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Why reform public procurement now?
• New best practice: what was good for paper-based
procurement procedures does not work for eProcurement –
e-commerce with public sector
• Revised regulatory standards:
- UN Convention Against Corruption
- 2011 UNCITRAL Model Law on Public
Procurement
- 2012 WTO Government Procurement
Agreement
- 2014 European Union directives on public
procurement and concessions
- Updated MDBs Procurement Policies and Rules
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New policy messages in reform context
• Focus: efficiency of procurements without compromise on
transparency
• eProcurement tools: utilise to improve transparency of the
procurement (and get rid of bureaucracy)
• More professional procurement: qualified officers for better
accountability of procurement decisions
• Market access: engage local suppliers, SMEs in particular
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The EBRD & UNCITRAL Public Procurement Initiative
•
•
Designed to promote upgrading
procurement laws originally based
on the 1994 UNCITRAL Model
Law, but now outdated
Kick – off: May 2011, EBRD
Annual Meeting, Astana,
Kazakhstan
Programme partners
EBRD
UNCITRAL
OSCE
OECD Anti Corruption Network
Asian Development Bank
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The EBRD UNCITRAL Initiative
The EBRD UNCITRAL Initiative country-tailored technical
cooperation projects focus on:
(1) Legislative reform:
• support in drafting modern public
procurement legislation
(2) Institution building:
3(3) Regulatory and enforcement
capacity
• supporting national procurement
regulatory authorities
•strengthening national procurement
review bodies
• promoting unrestricted and free access to (4) Procurement function development
information on procurement opportunities
• promoting e-Government and e• promoting professionalism and
Procurement
certification of the procurement officers
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Work in progress: Mongolia
2010 assessment
EBRD – UNCITRAL
diagnostic
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First results: Armenia
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Using the UNCITRAL Model Law for a general update:
Kyrgyz Republic
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Supporting reforms
• Several countries in the EBRD region are committed to public procurement
reforms in order to benefit from implementing new policy standards;
however a number of countries remains unresponsive (Azerbaijan,
Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan) .
• eProcurement is being implemented as a tool to increase good governance in
procurement and transparency of procurement decisions in particular.
• Through the EBRD UNCITRAL Initiative projects we learned that:
– the 2011 UNCITRAL Model Law on Public Procurement is very valuable
for countries which previously based their legislation on the 1994
UNCITRAL standards (the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan);
– specific instruments promoted by UNCITRAL such as framework
agreements and review procedures are globally popular and frequently
used by national legislators (Armenia, Moldova);
– thanks to harmonisation with the principles of the Agreement on
Government Procurement (GPA) of the World Trade Organisation the
UNCITRAL Model Law standards are increasingly interesting to countries
pursuing the GPA accession.
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Contact
Michel Nussbaumer
Legal Transition Programme
Office of the General Counsel
One Exchange Square
London EC2A 2JN, United Kingdom
Nussbaum@ebrd.com
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