Workshop: “Economically most advantageous bid and framework agreements for the purpose of economical and effective public procurement”

April 26, 2018

In cooperation with the General Secretariat of the Serbian Government, supported by the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) and Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), the Public Procurement Office organised a workshop entitled “Economically most advantageous bid and framework agreements for the purpose of economical and effective public procurement” on 16-17 April, 2018.

The aim of the workshop was to highlight the importance of the implementation of the criterion of the most advantageous bid and maximisation of “the value for money” in the process of public spending. The criterion of the lowest price offered has mainly been used so far but it has not produced desired results, above all with regard to the characteristics and quality of the goods and services obtained.  One of the ways for a contracting authority to get the best subject of procurement for available funds (the highest “value for money”) is by implementing the criterion of the economically most advantageous bid. Therefore the Public Procurement Office has prepared models of tender documentations in which the criterion of the most advantageous bid is implemented for the most common subjects of procurement which were presented in the workshop. Moreover, framework agreements were also discussed as instruments for the promotion of the efficacy of the public procurement process.

The implementation of the criterion of the most advantageous bid was discussed from the perspective of the State Audit Institution through the analysis of concrete cases which were the subject of audit.

All presentations sparked a lot of interest among participants, stimulated a constructive discussion and comments of the present representatives of ministries, centralised bodies for public procurement, other contracting authorities and institutions.

The Public Procurement Office would like to thank all the workshop participants as well as UNDP and SIDA for their support and will strive to initiate and implement the conclusions reached during the workshop. The Public Procurement Office will try to involve all the interested parties in the future activities so as to achieve the best results with joint efforts.