12:10, 2 June 2023
YEREVAN, JUNE 2, ARMENPRESS. Cases of sole-source contracts in the government procurement procedure have dropped as a result of the Pashinyan administration’s policies, the Minister of Finance Vahe Hovhannisyan has said.
“The decision on making sole-source contracts was being made by the [Cabinet] in the past, but now we’ve changed the procedure and the decision to make a sole-source contract is done by a given [minister] with their own responsibility. As a result of this change we have a decrease of sole-source contract cases. Given the responsibility that each [minister] bears for every single decision, we see stronger supervision for internal procedures,” the finance minister told lawmakers at a joint committee hearing in parliament.
Meanwhile, the volume of competitive bidding contracts in 2022 stood at 49,1% when the starting indicator was 34,4% and the target intended for 2024 was set at 47%. The average number of bidders in the tenders is 2,7, he said.
“We must take into consideration that when we speak about non-competitive procurement it relates mostly to the kind of services that have a single supplier, such as water, gas, electricity and so on,” Hovhannisyan added.
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