Sincere state companies

To fill a gap in the government’s knowledge of what is happening in the procurement of state-owned companies – it arose due to the permission not to report on sanctions transactions – the Ministry of Finance intends to send out to the subjects of FZ-223 a new version of the directives governing their reporting on competitive and non-competitive purchases and transactions with single suppliers and SMEs . De facto, the government is ready to take their word for it when assessing the competitive environment in the procurement of state-owned companies – however, only until a closed section appears in the procurement information system with the data the White House needs.

Kommersant got acquainted with the draft of new “purchasing” government directives addressed to state-owned companies – the document was signed by Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Moiseev, who oversees the property block, and sent to his colleagues in the government for approval. The new directives are intended to replace version No. 1519p-P13 dated February 20, 2019, which obliges state-owned companies to report on the state of competition and the share of SMEs in their purchases based on the data they submitted to the EIS (a unified information system in the field of procurement).

In the context of hiding procurement data from the EIS to protect state-owned companies from sanctions, new directives should force them to provide the Ministry of Finance with information on competition and purchases from small businesses already at their own expense. The project assumes that this will allow a wider assessment of the effectiveness of procurement of subjects of Federal Law-223, – unlike directives No. 1519p-P13, it also requires data on the cost and quantitative shares of non-competitive purchases and purchases from a single supplier and on the growth in the number and share of SMEs in supplies to state-owned companies . State-owned companies, within ten days from the date of their receipt, will have to hold meetings of the boards of directors (supervisory boards) to make decisions on the development or adjustment of “programs to improve the quality of procurement management” in accordance with the new requirements and distribute them to subsidiaries, and 20 days after they acceptance – publish documents on the interdepartmental portal of state property management.

At the end of August, First Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov demanded to prepare a draft document that would allow the government to maintain requirements for the purchase of state-owned companies from small businesses; September). According to Law 223-FZ and by-laws, state-owned companies must purchase at least 25% of the total annual volume of purchases from SMEs. At the same time, 20% of purchases should be carried out based on the results of procurement procedures, in which only SMEs can participate (the so-called special auctions). In general, after the ban on “sanctioned” state-owned companies from posting information about their purchases in the EIS, the state lost data on half of such transactions (about 5 trillion rubles in six months with an annual volume of 22 trillion rubles).

However, independent calculation by state companies of the level of competition and the share of SMEs in their purchases will not be long – the White House has already approved a resolution regulating access to the closed part of the EIS, where data on “sanctioned” purchases of state companies will be collected. Access to data on the plans of state companies for procurement, as well as to analytics and data from the register of contracts will also be given to the SME Corporation, which is responsible for monitoring the procurement of state companies from small businesses. From April 2023, these data will again be available to regulators and controllers (see Kommersant of November 10), which should encourage the state JSC to provide reliable reporting: otherwise, “gaps” in statistics may arouse the interest of inspectors. Yesterday, the Ministry of Finance could not promptly answer Kommersant’s questions about the verification of the data provided by the State JSC.

Oleg Sapozhkov