Ruslan Beketayev: Those who pay taxes are ones who should participate in government procurement

Jan. 22 at a press conference following a meeting of the Government Vice Minister of Finance Ruslan Beketayev spoke about the main innovations in public procurement and procurement of the quasi-public sector.

If in previous years, the work of the Ministry of Finance in the development of public procurement was aimed at enhancing the transparency of procedures, today this task has already been completed. As noted by the vice minister, the ministry’s current work on improving public procurement focuses on quality and fair approach.

“100% of our public procurement procedures have been converted to electronic format and, accordingly, we believe that great emphasis should be placed on quality. By setting the thresholds for dumping, we thereby determine the aspect that companies that perfectly understand what the price should be will take part in the procurement. Also the fact that the reduction, conditionally during construction, will not fall below 10%, will just guarantee quality,” said Beketayev.

Meanwhile, the bill defines that the main criterion for selection will be work experience. Companies will compete in terms of work experience and the relative price will be determined based on this.

“The notional price will determine the winner in most cases. But, if setting the dumping, we can see the situation that everyone has gone down on these 10% and we can not determine the winner, respectively, here the determining factor will be the payment of taxes. Our ideology is such that whoever pays taxes should participate in government procurement, and, accordingly, whoever pays more should win, therefore we often see that companies that do not have experience and do not pay taxes, lower prices and win. And then they could not finish building the object, which led to the non-mastering or poor-quality performance of their tasks,” Beketayev explained.

In addition, as part of the centralization of public procurement, for the Unified Procurement Organizers at the republican, regional and district levels, the Ministry of Finance approved the corresponding lists of goods, works and services, which are effective from March 1, 2019.

According to Beketayev, this innovation is due to the release of state institutions, whose work is focused on the performance of social duties, from non-characteristic functions, as well as an increase in efficiency with a single purchase.

“Firstly, state institutions such as schools, hospitals, social facilities whose main activity is aimed at training and providing social services are participating in public procurement. And the ideology of this amendment is to free from those unusual functions of the state institutions that should deal with other issues. Firstly, centralization will enable optimal procurement, which will effectively affect a single institution,” said Beketayev.

Recall, in order to improve the scope of public procurement and procurement in the quasi-state sector, Dec. 26, 2018, the Head of State signed the law “On Amendments and Additions to Certain Legislative Acts of the Republic of Kazakhstan on Public Procurement and Procurement in the Quasi-Public Sector,” which came into force Jan. 1, 2019.