At its regular meeting on Wednesday, the Bulgarian government adopted a set of rules aimed at improving the application of the Public Procurement Act.

These measures are taken to avoid cases in which politicians have to halt public tenders due to suspicions for the lack of transparency and irregularities in the selection process.

This was announced by Deputy Prime Minister Tomislav Donchev and Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov on Wednesday.

The rules are aimed at establishing decisive measures for control, mechanisms for random checks of concluded contracts and public tenders awarded without notices.

Goranov expressed hope that by increasing the administrative control, the need for politicians to halt public tenders of high public interest will not arise.

This development comes after Prime Minister Boyko Borisov ordered the suspension of a set of public tenders in the past weeks due to suspicions for the lack of transparency and irregularities in the selection process of contractors.

After his orders, the institutions had to find legal grounds for the termination of the tenders, daily Dnevnik informs.

Donchev said that it was important to establish prevention, with the focus of the efforts being on spotting the mistakes before contracts are concluded or payments are made.

Two preventive measures have been introduced, the first one being to extend the preliminary control, the second concerning the monitoring of tenders which have already been announced.

With the new measures, authorities will monitor whether a tender abides to the laws and make sure that there is no discrimination in the selection process.

The steps taken were only the first stage of five or six forthcoming measures.

Among the next measures are: the introduction of standardised documentation, complete publicity of public procurement contracts and new sanctions to those awarding the contracts.

Due to the large number of public procurement procedures, it is most likely that every thirtieth tender will be subject to a random check.

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