[ad_1]
“Roads of Serbia” intended to spend 5 million dinars or 42,000 euros to change the company logo, that is, this public company estimated that the redesign of the company logo would cost so much. Tomislav Momirović, Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure, prevented them from doing so. He promised to stop this public procurement, which, according to him, is from the previous period, although it is not within his competence and the only one who can do something like this by law is the director, when there is no one in this company, and in the position of interim . Zoran Drobnjak has been around for six years and is not advertised this time.
– Rumors on social media are simply not true. Among other things, for those things, I came to this place to be firm and determined and not to allow the involuntary spending of people’s money. As for some budgets in the past that were called for, they have been stopped and there will be no such things as long as he is minister – Momirovic told Tanjug and emphasized that he would spend the state money carefully, and this also applies to the companies under his jurisdiction. .
Momirovic, who was active on Twitter as a businessman and continued as minister, wrote yesterday that “Roads of Serbia” had incurred huge losses in the past and that he would do everything possible to prevent such business from happening again in the future. A day before, after the discussion broke out on this social network about the enormous amount that this public company intends to spend on the logo, the minister wrote on his Twitter account that the public contracting of making the logo is part of the 2019 plan and that is altogether. with some more stalled acquisitions, and the money will be redirected to infrastructure projects.
The “Roads of Serbia” website indicates that the aforementioned tender is part of the public procurement plan that will be executed in the fourth quarter of 2020, and the harmonization plan for public procurement for 2020 with the Public Procurement Law was approved on October 30 of this year, two days after the formation of the new government of Prime Minister Ana Brnabić.
We did not receive any response from the Ministry of Construction on how this public procurement is part of the 2019 plan, what other public purchases in this company were stopped by the Minister and if it will ask the government to replace c. re. Director Zoran Drobnjak, as the State Audit Institution (SAI) also has hundreds of objections to the tendering procedures in this public company.
We did not learn yesterday from “Roads of Serbia” how they estimated that they would need five million dinars for the logo redesign. The association of freelancers in social networks offers various solutions of the new logo “Roads of Serbia” for free, and that this company in turn pays five million dinars for the treatment of sick children.
Nemanja Nenadić, Director of Programs at Transparency Serbia, confirms that many experts have indicated that this price is too high and the public reacted angrily to the planned allocation of public funds.
– As is clear from the aforementioned plan, the hiring had to be carried out between October and December of this year, in an open procedure, but it has not been announced until today. The fact that the estimated value of the contract is too high can indicate several things. The most benign assumption would be that the value is not estimated based on market research, but is determined “deductively”, without the intention of fixing the position for a specific company. In that case, in an open procedure, if the purchase had been made, the most favorable price would have been reached, which could be significantly lower than what the company was willing to pay – he says.
Another possibility, he notes, would be for the market to be surveyed and for the “Roads of Serbia” procurement planners to have before them examples of some other public companies or state agencies that actually paid such a high amount for the production or redesign of their symbols. If that were to happen, it would mean we have a much bigger problem than wasting public funds hiring just one company.
In his opinion, the worst would be if there really was a desire to set up a job for a certain company, to which the full amount planned would be paid. However, for something like this, as he himself says, it is not enough to inflate the estimated value of the contract, it would be necessary to eliminate competition by establishing discriminatory conditions or inadequate criteria for the selection of an offer. Even in that case, there would be a possibility that the procurement would be challenged in the protection procedure, but dissatisfied companies are unlikely to get involved, given the high fees, the relatively low value of the procurement, and the uncertainty that they would get work on the case. to bring down the tender.
– Throughout history, although it sounds absurd, it is even good that the value is estimated above the real one. If the acquisition was planned in the actual amount (less than a million dinars), it would not have to be advertised at all, but “Roads of Serbia” could target potential service providers directly at its discretion, says Nenadić.
Asked who can stop the tender procedure, the director of the Transparency program says that the Ministry of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure has no authority to stop or order the execution of the public procurement “Serbian Roads”. That company is the contracting entity within the meaning of the Public Procurement Law and assumes full responsibility for the legal planning and execution of the procurement. Nenadic says that the government has the possibility to influence its public acquisitions by giving or denying consent to its annual business program, however, the government as a whole, and especially the Ministry of Economy, is also in doubt, as in charge. of all public companies.
– If public procurement was visible in the business program, then the government lost the opportunity to decide on that when it approved the plans for this year. Although there is undoubtedly the real influence of the competent ministry in this public company, it is not based on any legal authorization. The decision as to whether the planned hiring will be carried out depends exclusively on the decision of the director who is authorized to decide on it based on the Public Companies Law. At the moment, the Serbian Roads have no one who can legally decide which public procurement will be advertised, or enter into contracts after the public procurement procedure carried out, says Nenadić.
The term of the acting director of this public company, Zoran Drobnjak, expired in 2014, and he is in office. re. been for six years. The state control entity, in addition to recently recommending to the supervisory council of that company the election of a director in accordance with the law, warned omissions and illegalities in public procurement worth almost 500 million euros, during the previous two years. According to the SAI’s findings, the company, for example, does not have any documentation on how it determined the estimated value of public procurement in the amount of 7.18 billion dinars, which is an important step in the procurement process that ensures that it does not excessive offers are accepted.
At the same time, in the last two years, “Roads of Serbia” recorded a loss of 28 billion dinars, or more than 230 million euros. Last year, the loss reached 16.8 billion dinars. The financial statements indicate that the loss is due to the fact that the company’s balance sheets contain the value of all the state highways that it manages and, therefore, have a huge depreciation cost. But, like every year, they received grants from the budget.
The money for subsidies to the public companies “Serbian Roads” and “Serbian Corridors”, with the rebalancing of this year’s budget, has increased from 9.7 to 25 billion dinars.
[ad_2]
