RITE Ugljevik illegally spent 390,000 BAM on alcohol, fish, dairy and hygiene products

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - In less than two years, the management of RITE Ugljevik procured goods worth nearly 390,000 BAM from one company without a tender.

The company in question is Građapromet from Bijeljina, from which consumer goods were purchased for years without a single transparent public procurement procedure being initiated. The mine's management concluded 73 contracts worth up to 6,000 BAM each, thus avoiding the announcement of a tender, even though splitting procurement is prohibited by law.

The Rulebook of the Public Procurement Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina stipulates that only 6,000 BAM per year can be spent on the same item through a direct agreement, but RITE Ugljevik spent around 24,000 BAM last year just on the procurement of "yogurt in cups."

Građapromet, since it started entering data on the Public Procurement Portal, has concluded a total of 80 direct agreements, 73 of which with RITE Ugljevik. According to this data, this company has never been awarded a contract through a more transparent procedure by this contracting authority, which it continuously supplies with alcohol, dairy products, fish and hygiene products. The value of most of these agreements is at the limit of 6,000 BAM, even though everything could have been procured through a single transparent procedure and the conclusion of an annual framework agreement.

Due to suspicion that the contracting authority deliberately split the procurement subject in order to avoid applying a more transparent procedure, Transparency International in Bosnia and Herzegovina filed a report with the Public Procurement Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, TI BiH announced.

Illegal fragmentation of public procurement is one of the most common forms of abuse of the Public Procurement Law, which favors certain bidders. The portal transparentno.ba has previously written about similar occurrences at other public companies, and as a result, the Public Procurement Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina launched a monitoring of direct agreements at these companies.