Visibility is returned to government trade – Newspaper Kommersant No. 208 (7409) dated 11/10/2022

The White House approved a resolution regulating access to the closed part of the unified information system in the field of procurement, where data on “sanctioned” purchases of state-owned companies will be collected. By allowing the state JSC not to report on contracts due to the risks of spreading sanctions, the state lost data on half of such purchases (about 5 trillion rubles in six months, with an annual volume of 22 trillion rubles). From April 2023, these data will again be available to regulators and controllers, and until then, the government intends to get directive reporting on expenditures from the state joint-stock company. However, the return of transparency to the state order does not solve the problems of monopolization of this market – concessions for non-competitive purchases have been extended to 2023.

The White House has published a new resolution on public procurement (FZ-44) and state-owned companies (FZ-223). Decree No. 1946 of October 31, 2022 introduces mass technical amendments to the rules for maintaining the register of contracts. So, from January 2023, new conditions for processing acceptance documents are applied, the need is introduced, following the results of the execution of the contract, to indicate the amount of claims for payment of penalties and fines, if any, checks of individual details are excluded. In addition, the rules for evaluating participants’ applications have been adjusted and the supplier’s payment period for goods and services provided by subcontractors from small businesses or social non-profit organizations has been shortened.

At the same time, the resolution determines the access of regulators and controllers to the data of the closed UIS loop. Recall that in the spring, due to the risk of “secondary sanctions”, state-owned companies were able to classify data on purchases and not publish data about them in the EIS. The measures made these purchases invisible to the state – the volume of purchases of the state JSC in the open part fell by half in half a year. The Ministry of Finance promised to return visibility to the fallen purchases. So, from April 1, 2023, sanctioned customers will be required to post information about concluded contracts in the UIS contract register (104-FZ). At the same time, companies are already required to place procurement plans for 2023 in the closed part of the EIS.

According to the government decree, access to “information in the EIS in the field of procurement, which is not published on the official website” will be given to the Ministry of Finance, the Federal Treasury, the Federal Antimonopoly Service, the Accounts Chamber, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Chief Military Prosecutor’s Office and other authorities in accordance with acts of the President or government. The document establishes different levels of access to the closed part of the UIS: for example, procurement participants themselves will be able to see the data and documents that they themselves have posted.

Access to data on state-owned companies’ procurement plans, as well as analytics and data from the register of contracts will be given to the SME Corporation, which is responsible for monitoring state-owned companies’ procurement from small businesses. According to the corporation, in the first nine months of 2022, the share of purchases from SMEs under Federal Law 223 set a record and amounted to almost half (48.5%) of the total, or 3 trillion rubles. in terms of money. However, these data are incomplete and cannot be compared with the previous period: due to sanctions relief, procurement data for the 900 largest state-run JSCs have simply been lost. De facto, all the results of 2022 on the procurement of state-owned companies and their compliance with the requirements – for example, on the purchase of domestic products – are irrelevant.

According to Kommersant, government directives will be issued in the near future, which will oblige sanctioned companies to provide data on purchases from small businesses to the SME Corporation. “GosAO will provide information on the volume of purchases from SMEs on a monthly basis and at the end of the year,” a source familiar with the passage of the document in the government told Kommersant. Earlier, Kommersant already reported that the Ministry of Finance asked to adjust the “purchase” directives to state-owned companies in accordance with the new requirements for import substitution and counter-sanctions – reporting on competitive and non-competitive purchases, on the ratio of “forced” purchases from a single supplier and non-competitive ones in general was supposed to fill government gaps on dropped purchases. It is likely that in 2023 the government will be able to restore transparency to government orders, but it is hardly possible to restore the scale of invisible anti-sanction spending, as well as solve the problem of concentration in the government order market: the other day, the authorities extended temporary regulations that expanded the ability of government customers to purchase from a single supplier.

Diana Galieva