Parliament bans award of public procurements under the in-house procedure

Under draft amendments to the Public Procurement Act that Bulgaria’s Parliament passed at first reading on December 14, the awarding of public procurements under the so-called in-house procedures is banned.

The adopted amendments prohibit the contractor from assigning the subject of the contract or even parts of it to other entities. In addition, the contractor is obliged to declare that it can execute the contract with its own resources and to publish the concluded contracts and their annexes together with the attachments in the Register of Public Procurement.

The draft amendments also provide for monitoring and sending information to control bodies such as the Public Financial Inspection Agency (PFIA) and the Audit Office, which is part of Brussels' requirements to allow the second tranche of funds under the Recovery and Resilience Plan. The proposals aim to reduce the number of negotiated procedures without a call for tenders as well as contracts awarded on the basis of a single offer.

In this regard, it is envisaged that the contracting authority will be obliged to set an additional period of at least ten days where no applications or offers are received or only one application or offer is received in the period initially set.