Last year, the Procurement Monitoring Bureau (PMB) received 530 complaints, and the overall trend in recent years remains unchanged — about 6% of all procurements are contested, said PMB director Artis Lapins in an interview with LETA.
Of the submitted complaints for consideration, the Procurement Monitoring Bureau (PMB) accepted 433. "Complaints are not accepted for consideration if the deposit has not been paid, if violations are not specified in the complaint, if deadlines are missed, and for other reasons. Another 50 complaints were subsequently withdrawn by the applicants themselves," said Lapins.
He reported that a total of 334 complaints were considered last year, with some being reviewed this year. Of these, 123 complaints, or 37%, were found to be justified. According to him, similar figures have been observed in other years — about 40% of complaints are recognized as justified.
Among the sectors where complaints about procurement were submitted, construction works predominated — 62 complaints. There were 40 complaints regarding food procurement and catering services, as there were relatively many procurements related to school meals last year. There were 32 complaints regarding information technology procurements. Following that are consulting services, training, security, and other areas with fewer complaints.
"Mainly, the conditions of procurement and requirements for participants are contested. Unfortunately, this is a characteristic feature of Latvia, indicating that customers often focus not on finding and selecting the best offer, but on eliminating the 'in some sense worst' supplier. As a result, the procurement requirements become excessively rigid, and we send the market a signal that should not be sent," noted Lapins.
As for the evaluation criteria, financial ones are most often contested — applicants believe that competitors' offers were unreasonably low or that individual items were incorrectly assessed, explained Lapins.
