Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- On 9 April 2018, the Law of the Republic of Uzbekistan “On public procurement” was adopted, the purpose of which is to regulate relations in the field of public procurement. The adoption of the law formed the legal foundations of a national system for the effective implementation of public procurement.

The law on public procurement defines the basic principles, procedure and types of public procurement. In accordance with this law, state customers must conduct public procurement based on the principles of openness and transparency, competitiveness and objectivity (ensuring equal opportunities for participants in procurement procedures), proportionality, unity and integrity of the public procurement system and non-corruption.

However, today there are a large number of developed and submitted cases of draft normative legal acts for approval by ministries and departments, as well as economic managements and executive authorities, providing for the granting of exclusive rights to state customers to determine the types of procurement procedures those do not meet the requirements of the law on public procurement.

In order to prevent such cases, with the initiative of the Ministry of Finance had made provision in the Decree of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan dated 13 August 2019, No.5780. This provision prohibits the practice of any contradictions between the law on public procurement and perspective orders of the Cabinet of Ministers and the preparation and submission to the Cabinet of Ministers drafts of normative legal acts, providing for exceptional procedure of direct contracts in public procurement.

Despite this, during 2019, the Ministry of Finance received for approval more than a hundred draft legal acts that do not meet the requirements of the law on public procurement and provide for the provision of an exclusive procedure for concluding direct contracts, as well as the selection of the best offers. In the four months of this year, there are already 19 such projects. The Ministry of Finance has provided comments and suggestions on all projects that do not comply with the requirements of the law on public procurement to ensure healthy competition and full transparency in this area.

The Ministry of Finance will continue to critically review draft legal acts that provide for rules that grant exclusive rights to certain entities and are inconsistent with legislation in the field of public procurement.