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In this country, no one who is not close to the top of the government can get a great job, is the conclusion that emerges from the extensive investigation of the Toplica Center for Democracy, the representative of this organization, Dragan Dobrašinović told Nova.rs.
The Toplica Center conducted an investigation in which it analyzed the 100 economically largest companies in which the state, that is. public sector, one of the contracting parties, assessing the degree of competition and the level of transparency of public spending in Serbia.
Dobrašinović says that during in-depth analyzes of public procurement, public-private partnerships, and interstate agreements, it was found that competition is almost non-existent, with a small number of the same companies landing the most lucrative jobs.
The essence is that no one in this country can get a great job if they are not close to the top of the government, that is, if they are not close to that political-business oligarchy, “he says to Nova.rs Dobrašinović adds that the analyzes, amounts and numbers of contracts that some companies received prove this.
Who cites one of the examples as the company “Južna Bačka”, which, as he says, concluded 337 contracts with the state in one year, of which 122 contracts in a single day.
“Imagine a situation in which a company concludes 377 contracts in 261 business days, whose revenues increase from 51 million in 2017 to 84 million in 2019, which has five of the first 100 most important contracts,” he says.
The most lucrative jobs are in the hands of 32 companies
The survey found that 32 companies appear two or more times and have signed a total of 79 of the top 100 agreements with the public sector.
“These may be the best companies in the field in which they operate, but how do we get to the situation that one set of companies is so dominant relative to others? What recommended them as credible, capable, operational, and other completely non-competitive? “, Question.
He notes that the investigation showed that competition in Serbia is practically dead. Thus, in 71 out of 100 procedures only one bidder appears, in 20 out of 100 two, and only in the remaining 9 there are three or more bidders, which can only be treated as the existence of competition.
“When only one company competes for jobs worth several tens of millions of euros, when there is no competition in very attractive jobs, you are clear about what game is being played there,” he says, adding:
“Then when you look at those conditions a bit, for example, for participation in public procurement, what the tender setup itself looks like, it becomes clear to you that many of these acquisitions are tailored exactly to certain bidders.”
In addition, there is the practice that the state contracts directly with foreign companies, where competition is excluded by the law itself.
He says that in this social context, there is no solution to such a situation, because “no government in our country had the desire to create a system.”
“The business elite linked to the top of the government does not intend to change anything because they are the outright winner, and those who are, as a rule, the losers, the healthy part of the market, simply do not have the strength to fix it,” says Dobrasinovic.
He says that there are good solutions that, unfortunately, do not stay with us.
“They are good laws, a different approach, courts that do their job, institutions within the public procurement system, which are governed by law,” he concludes.
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