The defense reports have started to be published in Prozorro since the first day of the introduction of the relevant mechanism – on April 23. In less than a month, several thousands of agreements were published, both for the preceding periods and the newly concluded. Will it impact the defense capacity of Ukraine?
Mykola Tkachenko, Director of Prozorro State-Owned Enterprise, told about it in his Ekonomichna Pravda media column.
He states that the majority of the reports cover food, military uniform, and machine repairs, “however, paintballs and even military ship parts can also be found there”.
The revised Law “On Defence Procurement” is known to make the defense buyers liable to publish the prices of the concluded contracts in Prozorro. It refers to all the purchases except for those related to weapon and constituting a state secret.
If food is purchased as a comprehensive service, the buyers need to report the prices of each item in the batch by loading the relevant calculation spreadsheet to Prozorro. The system does not let the report it if it contains no goods, work, or service item price.
Mykola Tkachenko informs that Prozorro works on the functionality of framework agreements to enable “defense buyers to announce the selection of the framework agreement participants, agree on the suppliers’ offers in Prozorro, and consider them in a competitive manner.”
“Only they and the supervisory bodies will get access to information on these purchases. It will allow the defense buyers to get high-quality services at the best price, while Ukrainian manufacturers will get access to defense procurement and get orders in fair competition,” he states.
Director of Prozorro State-Owned Enterprise also thinks it was a correct decision to establish a defense procurement office announced by the Ministry of Defense, for defense procurement is in need of transformation.
NAKO has also more than once emphasized how important it is to create a state-owned enterprise as the single defense procurement body within the MoD and to implement other radical reforms. The main goal of this organization is facilitating healthy competition between the local and foreign suppliers by simplifying the tender procedure and keeping the optimal cost/quality ratio.
Olena Tregub, NAKO Executive Director, reminds that Volodymyr Zelenskyi, the President of Ukraine, have promised to establish this structure within the Law “On Defense Procurement” back in 2020. The last Annual National Program under the auspices of the NATO-Ukraine Commission also includes a task of establishing a unified purchase body to carry out the purchases and implement the policy in defense procurement.