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The Government of the Republic of Serbia

In the service of citizens

Employees to be trained for e-procurement

Belgrade, 3 October 2008

Serbian Minister of Telecommunications and Information Society Jasna Matic announced today that employee training for electronic public procurement will be organised in 25 towns in Serbia and will start in late November, lasting nearly a year.

Jasna Matic and Predrag Jovanovic

Speaking at a press conference, Matic pointed out that the benefit of electronic advertising for public procurement will be twofold – the level of corruption in Serbia will reduce and the procurement procedure will become more transparent and effective.

According to Matic, funds for training employees who organise public procurement for budget beneficiaries, as well as for the purchase of a server for the public procurement portal were allocated from the National Investment Plan.

She pointed out that it is very important to adopt the new law on public procurement as soon as possible, because it is one of the most important laws in the fight against corruption, and will also ensure equal conditions for all participants in public procurement proceedings.

Director of the Serbian Public Procurement Office Predrag Jovanovic explained that the aim of employee training is to offer all bidders efficient use of the public procurement portal, as a modern and advanced means of advertising.

Jovanovic said that 6,500 employees will be trained during the next year and they will be responsible for public procurement in 25 Serbian cities. He stressed that e-noticing and e-tendering will result in annual savings worth more than RSD 200 million.

He explained that e-procurement became possible in February this year, but only a small number of bidders used this option because it was not a legal obligation, while the other reason was that employees were not trained.

The new bill on public procurement, which is in parliament currently, envisages that public purchase of goods worth more than RSD 5 million, and services worth more than RSD 20 million, must be advertised in the Official Gazette as well as at the public procurement portal, instead of daily newspapers.

Last year more than 120,000 public procurement contracts worth a total of RSD 187 billion were made, as well as 31,000 major contracts which cost RSD 159 billion.