| Work Detail |
The priority in the House of Representatives today is to implement the Public Procurement Law. The concerned committee holds intensive meetings to implement the internationally required law. What is new is that an independent body will take over. This opens a door for concern over its transformation into a new regulatory body subject to favoritism, interests and political quotas.
One of the demands of the international community, especially the French, is the passage of the public procurement law, which is supposed to end the loose and chaotic stage of contracting public deals. Given the priority of this law, only the subcommittee emanating from the joint parliamentary committees concerned with discussing it breaks the silence that surrounds the halls of parliament. Other committees do not convene, and the offices of parliament are closed due to Corona, and because of the damage caused to the parliament as a result of the port explosion. That committee, headed by Representative Yassin Jaber, holds two meetings a week, in an effort to implement the proposal prepared by the Financial Institute (Basil Fuleihan Institute) after it was commissioned on March 4, 2019 by the Minister of Finance. The proposal is the product of a long track of government commitments to international pressure that has produced dozens of workshops.
Al-Ain International is focused on public procurement as it is the main tool for spending public money, the size of which, according to the Ministry of Finance, is estimated at 13% of the general budget and 4% of the GDP (about $ 2 billion). Note that this estimate does not include the volume of purchases of public institutions, municipalities, and projects financed from abroad. According to the ministrys estimates, modernizing the public procurement system would achieve annual savings of $ 500 million. That is an amount, which makes it clear that it is no longer possible to work without a central system of tenders, which ends the continuous spoilage. However, in exchange for the conviction of all the blocs in the inevitability of modernizing the public procurement process, the discussions taking place in the parliamentary committee confirm that some are still seeking to include politics and quotas in the process.
On Tuesday, the discussion reached Chapter Six (Article 74), on the governance of public procurement. The surprise was the amendment of the legal entity in question. After the first versions of the proposal referred to "the Public Procurement Department", the last version was docked to the "Public Procurement Authority". This is an amendment, which was not captured by many in the committee, based on the bad experience of the existing bodies, which theoretically enjoy independence from the official administration, while practically controlling politics and quotas in every detail in it, which transforms it into advisory bodies whose members are divided among sects and are free from administrative controls. The quota system is also strengthened in the way the president and members of the commission are appointed (two members in addition to an alternate member). The appointment is not based on the employee system, but rather through the Council of Ministers. The president is appointed after a proposal from the Prime Minister, who is supposed to seek the opinion of the Civil Service Board, provided that he is free to perform his duties. The members are named by the Ministers of Finance, Economy and Justice. The Minister of Finance nominates an employee of the second category affiliated with his ministry, who shall make the ministry’s observations when justified by the requirements of preserving public funds. The Minister of Economy nominates one of the Ministrys specialized employees. The Minister of Justice nominates an administrative or judicial judge who has competence in the field of public procurement.
The assignment of this responsibility to the three ministers is not justified by one of the representatives except by the hidden sectarian distribution. Note that the principle itself is rejected for technical reasons as well. Representatives of the ministries of finance and economy will be among their jobs to supervise the tenders of their ministries, add that the natural role of the representative of the Ministry of Finance is supposed to be in the contracting committees and not in the management body. As for the presence of a judge in the commission, this sheds light on the issue of delegating judges to work in ministries, despite the impartiality of this procedure for judges from their role and their transformation into directors of "legal" solutions that help ministers circumvent laws. Note that this appointment contradicts the principle of the ability of all administrative decisions of the Authority to appeal before the State Council.
Bidding system standardization: an opportunity to save $ 500 million
These are matters that have not been resolved yet in the parliamentary committee, as they are supposed to complete their discussion in a later session. However, one of the members of the committee points out that the method of appointment dictates that the commission and its members be influenced by politics, calling for the adoption of more transparent and rational options in the appointment. Note that the representative himself returns and indicates that any method of appointment will involve politics, because the problem is not in laws or regulations, but with the prevailing mentality, which will be able to enter the body in the quota system, regardless of the mechanisms followed for work.
As a result, regardless of the mechanism, the Public Procurement Authority will inherit the tendering administration and will enjoy financial and administrative independence, but no one has mentioned its functional independence. It will not be interested in conducting tenders, because conducting tenders for all parties benefiting from public money (except for security services) would be a huge work, therefore, the choice was to oversee all public procurement deals, and to object to the decisions related to them, regardless of the party conducting the tender ( Public administrations, institutions, public bodies, municipalities and associations benefit from public money). The authority will be subject to the general system of public institutions, but it will also be subject to oversight by the Audit and Central Inspection Bureau.
The president of the commission shall receive a monthly lump sum compensation to be determined by a decree in the Council of Ministers, while the proposal does not indicate that the members will receive compensation. While it is natural for the authority to have an independent budget within the state’s general budget, the proposal indicates that the budget is not the only financial resource for it, but rather it is entitled to receive grants, grants and unconditional donations! This opens an additional door to chaos, while its budget is supposed to be limited to the state.
Among the tasks of the authority is to propose general policies related to public procurement, to collect annual purchase plans received from the purchasing authorities according to a unified form issued by them, to classify and publish them according to the rules on its central electronic platform, to publish all announcements and notices related to procurement, qualification and procurement procedures according to the rules, to develop and update the list of supplies and services And simple jobs that are purchased centrally, such as those related to office supplies, stationery, consumables, cleaning services, etc. |
