Companies which fail to pay to subcontractors may not be admitted to tenders under the Public Procurement Act, according to a proposal of Mihail Mihaylov, MP of the right-wing Blue Coalition.

The proposal is part of a set of legal amendments which Mihaylov will submit to Parliament for discussion on Wednesday, according to reports of the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency (BTA).

Mihaylov has argued that the bill aimed at preventing delays of payments to subcontractors is not politically motivated and must be supported by MPs.

The legal amendments proposed by the right-wing MP also stipulate that a company which won a public procurement contract will have to prove to the contracting authority that it paid subcontractors before it receives a new portion of money under the contract.

"If the subcontractor was not paid, the contracting authority will be able to pay the subcontractor directly, rather than to the company which won the public procurement contract," Mihaylov explains.

A few weeks ago, the subcontractors hired to build Lot 4 of the Trakia highway threatened road blocks and civil disobedience over delayed payments.

Representatives of 13 companies hired to build the Yambol-Karnobat section of the highway claimed that the contractor owed them a total of over BGN 500 000 and they had not received payments since end-April.

In April 2012, the European Commission called for greater transparency in public procurement, emphasizing the role of electronic communication by public sector organisations when buying supplies and services or tendering public works.

The EC plans to make e-procurement the standard method of procurement in the EU by mid-2016, thereby boosting transparency and saving billions of Euro.

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