At an open dialogue held on June 11 in Tashkent, entrepreneurs detailed the problems they face when participating in public procurement. A total of 370 complaints were received, of which 62 contained specific cases involving financial losses, lack of transparency, and violation of supplier rights.
The analysis of these complaints was presented at the first meeting of the Council of the Association of Public Procurement Participants (APPP) on June 30 by Deputy Chairman Marat Abidov. According to Abidov, the majority of complaints were not about the complexity of procedures or lack of participant knowledge.
'The vast majority of complaints are not related to a lack of knowledge or training of participants. These are not questions about how to register on the platform or submit an application. These are questions about how the system itself works,' he noted.
The most painful problem, according to entrepreneurs, is the lack of payment for already fulfilled state contracts. Abidov said that a supplier wins a tender, fulfills all obligations, delivers products, but then the state customer either does not pay at all or delays payment indefinitely.
As an example, he cited a case where an entrepreneur fully executed a contract worth nearly 100 million soums but never received payment. 'Cases have been recorded where a supplier won a tender, fully fulfilled its obligations, but did not receive payment from the customer,' Abidov said.
He emphasized that this is no longer about procedural difficulties but about direct financial damage to businesses. 'This reduces the desire of entrepreneurs to participate in public procurement at all,' noted the Deputy Chairman.
The second largest block of complaints concerned the transparency of tenders and fair competition. According to Abidov, many entrepreneurs believe that in some cases the winner is effectively determined before the procurement is announced.
'Participants report tenders that appear to be pre-arranged in favor of a specific supplier,' he said. According to business complaints, customers sometimes formulate technical requirements in such a way that only one pre-known company can meet them.
After bids are submitted, according to entrepreneurs, commissions often draw up review protocols to reject other participants' proposals on formal grounds. 'They point to questionable bid review protocols, artificially inflated requirements for participants, and conditions that objectively limit competition,' Abidov noted.
According to Abidov, both categories of complaints show a common problem — the need to improve control mechanisms over the public procurement system. To solve the non-payment issue, it is proposed to consider each such case on a priority basis and create a mechanism that prevents state customers from delaying payments with impunity.
Regarding tender complaints, Abidov proposed conducting selective checks of specific procurements, analyzing bid review protocols, and assessing whether technical requirements contain artificial restrictions on competition. At the end of the meeting, he proposed holding such open dialogues between the state and entrepreneurs at least once every two months, and distributing all 62 complaints into thematic groups with assigned responsible executors.
Source: podrobno.uz