Scicluna hails progress in public procurement procedures

Finance Minister Edward Scicluna hailed a ‘big’ improvement registered in recent years in public procurement procedures, saying that an EU benchmark report ranked Malta’s performance above the European average. Prof. Scicluna made his remark in a brief address at a public procurement conference organised this morning by the Contracts Department, in the run up to a series of changes which will be introduced in three weeks’ time. He noted that public procurement accounted to about €300 million of the government’s annual expenditure. Quoting from the findings of the 2014 EU benchmark report, he said that Malta's overall performance was above average, at par with Nordic countries. He noted that the number of contracts for which only one bid had been submitted, had gone down from 18 per cent in 2013 to 10 per cent in 2014. Prof. Scicluna noted that this was a positive development, as it meant a more competitive process. As for direct orders, he said these were normally the result of the lack of planning, and urgency.  While in 2012 direct contracts amounted to 1 per cent of public procurement, by 2014 they had  gone down to a negligible rate. Prof. Scicluna also spoke about efforts...