No Time for Amendments to the Public Procurement Law, Solution for Passport Procurement Must Be Found as Soon as Possible

Citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina will not be able to obtain a passport of their country from March 21, as things currently stand! The Agency for Identification Documents, Registers and Data Exchange of Bosnia and Herzegovina (IDDEEA) cannot by then issue a new tender for the procurement of booklets, and two have already been annulled. Therefore, a solution is being sought in the Public Procurement Law to allow for the possibility of extending the contract with the company that already produces passports or something similar, but a final solution is still not in sight, Patria reports.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs, headed by Adil Osmanović, is in daily communication with representatives of IDDEEA, but a solution is still not forthcoming.

Solution Being Sought

The Minister, in a statement to Patria, emphasizes that a solution must be found because the state and its citizens come first.

- We work every day, we are trying, and a solution must be found within the framework of existing laws – says Osmanović.

Incidentally, there is speculation in the public that some are willing to amend the Public Procurement Law, but at this moment that is not an acceptable solution, because such an act would require at least several months to pass.

In recent months, the media has spoken extensively about this problem, for which it was already clear then that citizens would again suffer the greatest damage due to the inertia of the authorities and competent institutions.

The current contract with the German company Muhlbauer d.o.o. Banja Luka, which produces Bosnian passports, expires on March 21. The tender for the production of passports has already failed twice. The first time in May, and the second in November last year. The job of producing passport booklets is worth around 25 million BAM.

The entire chaos arose after a complaint by the French company Gemalto S.A. Meudon France, which claims they are not competitive and that the German company that has so far printed the booklets cannot be the only one engaged in this. The Appeals Office accepted the complaints of the French company on both occasions, and a new, third tender was ordered.

It was precisely about this that the Minister of Security Dragan Mektić spoke last year, warning that the tender must be drafted in such a way as to enable other companies, and not exclusively one, to apply.

The French are very interested in winning the job of printing passport booklets. They possess top-notch machines that they are ready to install in Bosnia and Herzegovina as well, thus opening new jobs.

From the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is working on the "Muhlbauer" case, there is no more concrete information, which also further complicates matters, because without an indictment and a final decision of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the company Muhlbauer has no obstacles to applying for new tenders.

Audit Reports

We recall, the audit report on the operations of IDDEEA stated that this Agency favored a specific bidder, due to which personal documents in Bosnia and Herzegovina were issued at a far higher price than their actual value.

According to the audit report, the implementation of the negotiated procedure by IDDEEA with a single bidder, in this case the Banja Luka-based "Muhlbauer", called into question the transparency and cost-effectiveness of the procedure.

It was assessed that the procurement of the electronic chip for ID cards at eight convertible marks (almost four euros) is not realistic, given that according to the supplier's invoice they amount to about 1.1 euros.

The Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which considered the audit report, assessed that the arrangement between IDDEEA and "Muhlbauer" is detrimental to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The investigation regarding the procurement of personal documents began in 2014, and it should determine how the Banja Luka-based "Muhlbauer" got this job, at that time without a single reference, even though negotiations were held with the German consortium "Muhlbauer".

The job of producing ID cards and driver's licenses, worth almost 104 million marks, was awarded to the company "Muhlbauer Roding" from Germany, through a negotiated procedure, without publishing a notice and without the obligation to establish a company in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In the Banja Luka-based company "Muhlbauer", according to media reports, 40 percent of the ownership is held by the company "Nites", whose owner is Miodrag Škrbić and several other individuals that the media have linked to Milorad Dodik.

At the time of signing the first contract, the head of the Banja Luka-based Muhlbauer was Danilo Petković, the son-in-law of the former member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina and high-ranking SNSD official Nebojša Radmanović.