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72% of the contracting of national organizations was carried out through the special emergency regime for the pandemic, while 19% were made through the direct contracting mechanism. Only 5% were made through public bidding, the usual mechanism for government purchases and acquisitions. This arises from a survey carried out by Poder Ciudadano, in which it estimated that only 20% of public contracts related to Covid-19 are being published.
"There are no guaranteed minimum standards of transparency and accountability for purchases made by the national government to combat the effects of the pandemic," the Argentine chapter of Transparency International said in its report.
For this reason, the NGO formally requested the Audit General of the Nation (AGN) to carry out audits of all public contracts carried out within the framework of the decrees and administrative provisions issued in the fight against Covid-19. And it has already sent another note to the Joint Parliamentary Reviewing Committee - to which the AGN submits its reports - so that it "instructs" the control body to include these audits on the hiring of the pandemic in its Annual Operational Plan. approved.
To prepare the report that it sent to the AGN, Poder Ciudadano surveyed 61 official portals, including Compr.ar, the Official Gazette, the National Contracting Office, and the websites of the various national organizations, including hospitals. The objective is to be able to “exercise effective social control” over “the integrity of the affected public funds” with a focus on access and publicity of the public procurement and contracting system.
"We do not criticize emergency purchases because we understand that they are a necessary instrument at this time. But they need a specific emergency control. There is information scattered on different official websites; each ministry makes its purchases, and the amount of information published varies substantially, ”Pablo Secchi, executive director of Poder Ciudadano, told Infobae.
Germán Emanuele, director of Transparency and Fight against Corruption of the NGO, detailed what they found in their survey: “From surveying the numbers of files that in the different organisms, as they have correlative numbers, we detected that there is a large number that are not published. We estimate that only 20% appear on the official portals. There are purchases that are on the pages of the ministries that are not on the Compr.ar site; there are awards that appear in the Official Gazette but are not listed on the Compr.ar site. And on the other hand, there is the call or the start of the contract, but not the award. "
Covid-19 Purchase Observatory
The information published on the official sites was uploaded manually by Poder Ciudadano in a single online database of public access and in open format, which will be updated over time. This Covid-19 Purchasing Observatory includes, up to now, the information of the 330 hiring initiated within the emergency period, until last May 30.
The database has disaggregated information on the type of contract, object of the contract, the status of the process, data on the offers made (bidders, amounts offered), who were the successful bidders, the value of the purchase, and references of the web portals from where the information was extracted.
From the survey, it appears that most of the contracts are concentrated in the National University of San Martín, the Armed and Security Forces, the Ministry of Health and the National Development Ministry, and national hospitals.
72.3% were carried out through the special emergency regime for the pandemic, while 19% were carried out through the direct contracting mechanism. Only 5.3% were carried out through public bidding and 1.7% under the private bidding system.
Until May 30, more than $ 3,000 million pesos were awarded to 182 bidders. Of the total number of contracts surveyed, as of May 30, 51% were awarded, 38% were pending, 5% were deserted and another 5% were unsuccessful.
Regarding the companies participating in each purchase process that were awarded, according to the report by Poder Ciudadano, TECME SA, Genbiotech SRL and Chemtest Argentina SA lead the ranking by average amount of the contract, with amounts ranging from $ 260,000 to $ 384,000 .
Detected risks
Among the risks detected by Poder Ciudadano in the emergency public procurement exception procedure, are:
- Wide margins of discretion, since you can choose to contract through the Compr.ar system or outside of it.
- Ambiguity in determining the invitation to suppliers to participate. When a contract is made outside the Compr.ar, the rule indicates that a minimum of three must be invited. But this provision creates the risk that providers will be chosen to benefit one in particular.
- Absence of the formal act of opening bids and of the instance to challenge the decision by the discarded suppliers, since an evaluation opinion is not issued.
- The regulations allow the purchase to be awarded, even if a single offer was submitted.
- The publication of the contract after 10 days of completion prevents concomitant control of citizenship.
Discussion at the AGN
The request for Citizen Power generated a strong clash between members of the Front of All and those of the opposition at the meeting of auditors last Tuesday. On the agenda, an initiative by the radical Alejandro Nieva was foreseen to incorporate, starting in July, into the 2020 Annual Operational Plan, approved last year, the audit of budgetary expenses and purchases made by the State since the pandemic began. .
The AGN is an external control body of the Executive for technical assistance to the Legislative Branch. It is made up of seven members and is chaired by an opponent. Since this year, its owner is the radical Jesús Rodríguez, but most have the current ruling party.
Jesús Rodríguez, head of AGN.
The AGN president and co-author of that proposal endorsed the request and mentioned the note from the Citizen Power in the same sense and a request from the Administrative Investigations Office (PIA). This Prosecutors Office sent a letter asking if the AGN was carrying out any audit in relation to the overpricing detected in food purchases made by the Ministry of Social Development. The PIA launched a preliminary investigation on this issue and noted the difficulties in carrying out its task due to the "prevailing disorganization regarding the lack of transparency, visibility and inefficiency in the management of state activity in the field of public information."
But the pro-government auditors Javier Fernández, Juan Forlón, Graciela De la Rosa and Gabriel Mihura Estrada raised their objections, considering that facing a new audit at this point would mean stopping the ongoing investigations into the management of Mauricio Macri. In addition, they maintained that any modification to the annual Operational Plan should have the approval of the Mixed Auditing Commission of the Congressional Accounts.
“It does not imply to stop auditing what has to be audited from all previous management. That is a pretext to say that they do not want concomitant audits, "replied Nieva. This radical auditor, who has been working for the AGN for 11 years, insisted that the agency must incorporate emergency contracting into the Annual Plan, since the norm foresees doing so up to a month before starting the audit.
“Following the guidelines of all the audit institutions in the world, we can and must adapt the plans of the Audit to exercise control over budgetary modifications linked to Covid. This management has been going on for seven months, and we can audit contracts and purchases in the context of the first semester emergency. More considering that this year we do not have an approved Budget and the powers of the Chief of Staff to reassign items, "Nieva warned in a dialogue with Infobae.
"There are finished purchases, which are not in progress. And there are audits not only linked to purchases, such as the management of nursing homes by PAMI, which can start in August, and are audited up to a month before, on June 30, "added the radical auditor.
But from the ruling party, before consulting this medium, they remained in their position. "Resources are scarce. The action plan was approved last year. It is a matter of working hours. If you are asking to duplicate what to review, you cannot do the same number of audits. What we can do is first finish this years current Plan, and then start with the coronavirus emergency. Those contracts are going to be audited, but they want to put aside the audits on the management of macrismo when there are very serious things, such as external indebtedness, ”an auditor from the Frente de Todos said before this newspaper.
"On the other hand, the AGN always does ex-post audits. We have a phase out of a year or two. For internal controls at the time the contracts take place there is SIGEN. We are prohibited by law from doing concomitant checks. When Macri was in the government, they said that you had to wait. But today they want to audit the current management, "argued an auditor member of the ruling party.
And he relativized the lack of controls indicated: “It is an error to say that they do not exist in the emergency. If you do a tender with all the times they want you, possibly you will be out of time. But steps such as direct hiring can be taken and channels are followed to give it transparency. Controls continue to exist, the internal audit of each agency continues to exist and SIGEN continues to operate as well. It is not that there are no controls. ”
The argument was rejected, in turn, by the AGN president. “SIGEN does internal control and we do external control. In the emergency context that we are experiencing, the AGN has something to do, we cannot pretend that nothing is happening. They do not want to audit emergency hiring and are looking for arguments that it cannot, when it can, at least up to a month ago. The AGN has functional autonomy. An example was the case of Shared Dreams ”, Rodríguez recalled, referring to the plan for the construction of social housing by the Madres de Plaza de Mayo Foundation, which was denounced for numerous irregularities and Justice was based on an AGN report to corroborate them.
The Front of All made a counterproposal that the opposition was left to study. “It is quite petty. We proposed several audits, and they say no to the majority, and accept only a few, "Nieva admitted, without losing hope of reaching a consensus position.
In the absence of an agreement, the ruling party and the opposition decided to postpone a definition until Miguel Pichetto took office at the AGN, which will take place these days. The next auditor meeting is expected to be the week of July 13. By then, with the full body of auditors, Nieva and Rodríguez hope to add a voice of support with the former Peronist senator who became an opponent, to the discussion of the proposal to expand the audit plan.
“The AGN itself has on its website a way for civil society to send recommendations for programs or areas to be audited. In the emergency, controls must be strengthened. These types of audits should not interfere in a political discussion between the ruling party and the opposition, "lamented Secchi, of Poder Ciudadano. |
