What I mean is that we are now in the निर्णायक phase of discussions about what the public procurement system will look like. First of all, I recommend reading this *Vedomosti* article:
Roll Back the Law The government is beginning to coordinate amendments to public procurement legislation based on the contract system (FCS). The draft, which makes public oversight of tenders more difficult, is being considered without any public discussion. By September 29, the Ministry of Economic Development and the Finance Ministry are supposed to submit to the government a revised version of the FCS bill, prepared together with the Federal Antimonopoly Service, the Justice Ministry, and the Accounts Chamber. Read the full article Let me remind you what this is about. Right now there is Federal Law No. 94-FZ, under which our RosPil project also operates. It is completely obvious to everyone that the law needs changes and that those changes are timely, but it is not obvious to everyone exactly how this law should be modernized. The Ministry of Economic Development has drafted its own bill, repealing 94-FZ and creating a federal contract system. We agree with a number of the ideas proposed by the ministry, but those ideas have been implemented in their bill absolutely terribly. We prepared and submitted our comments a week ago. We recently received the ministry's reply (available here), which convinced us even more that FCS is in fact a full-blown Federal Corruption System.
The ministry's reply contains two main messages: - some things will only be developed after the bill is submitted to the State Duma (the lower house of Russia's parliament) and passes its first reading, if you don't like something now, draft it yourselves. For example, an entire chapter of the law on procurement methods. What we want to say about this: We are often accused of supporting the antimonopoly officials too zealously in their conflict with the Ministry of Economic Development. We do not support them. We have plenty of conflicts with the Federal Antimonopoly Service, and we are constantly in court with them. But to us it is obvious that the most effective way to improve the public procurement system is open, high-quality work on amending the current 94-FZ. The Federal Antimonopoly Service has proposed a bill that contains these changes. We agree with most of the service's proposals (http://www.fas.gov.ru/legislative-acts/legislative-acts_50788.html). Some useful things are missing, and RosPil is ready to draft them as amendments. There are also some things we categorically disagree with. For example, we do not agree with allowing closed tenders for contracts related to the activities of the President, the Government, and so on—in plain terms, hiding those orders from all of us.
If such an amendment is adopted, then orders like this one (http://zakupki.gov.ru/pgz/public/action/orders/info/common_info/show?notificationId=1656934), for example, will no longer be visible to us:
Renovating a cafeteria for 1.5 billion rubles is certainly something. Right now our RosPil team is looking into this contract.
Source: http://www.aif.ru/money/article/46108 At present, closed tenders may be held when they involve state secrets, and in our view that is entirely sufficient. **We категорically disagree with the proposed introduction of fees for antimonopoly authorities to review complaints. ** Right now, we pay nothing to file and have complaints reviewed regarding corrupt, kickback-driven contracts, but the Federal Antimonopoly Service wants to charge from 2,000 to 50,000 rubles, depending on the contract price, for reviewing a complaint if it is deemed unfounded. It might seem simple: write your complaints properly and you will not have to pay. But we have plenty of examples where our complaints were ruled unfounded when the opposite should have happened. For example, we would have had to pay 50,000 rubles when the Federal Antimonopoly Service issued a decision on the 6 billion ruble contract for construction of the Yekaterinburg interchange (I wrote about it in more detail here: http://navalny.livejournal.com/597380.html ), a decision it later contradicted itself with two other rulings (https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B1P8v5ccyxnkMWI2MzA3YWEtNjZjOS00MGRhLWI1ODAtNjFkZGQzMWIwYmYz&hl=ru&pli=1 , https://docs.google.com/document/d/1e7N_I3g3KKbgXmBwsMs2g5iazEa51yJlbcwIIlqM88k/edit?hl=ru&authkey=CPDE09gK). RosPil is ready to put forward many useful proposals for modernizing the procurement system. The most important anti-corruption innovation should be giving public organizations the right to act in the interests of an indefinite group of persons and to file complaints themselves in the sphere of public procurement. Something similar already exists under the laws "On Consumer Rights Protection" and "On Environmental Protection." If this right is written into the law, registered public organizations will be able to defend the interests of entrepreneurs and citizens, and the question of whether the person filing the complaint is a participant in the tender or not (that is, whether they have standing to file the complaint) will no longer arise. And so on and so forth. We have many constructive proposals. We are ready to cooperate with both the Federal Antimonopoly Service and the Ministry of Economic Development. However, the key point is that amendments can be made to the Federal Antimonopoly Service's proposals. You can argue over them and improve them. You can even have a shouting match over them. But at least there is something there to amend, whereas the FCS (the Ministry of Economic Development's draft) cannot be improved. It is based on false, harmful, and utopian principles. It is simply a return to 2004, nothing more. The Federal Antimonopoly Service is proposing not to reinvent the wheel, but to substantially improve a mechanism that already works. The Ministry of Economic Development is proposing to take that bicycle apart and turn the pieces into some kind of Frankenstein. Frankly, we do not know what proposals could possibly improve Frankenstein. I urge everyone to follow as closely as possible the debate within the Russian government over the future of the public procurement system. These are our 5 trillion rubles. Repealing 94-FZ and introducing the FCS, based on a "presumption of the official's good faith," will multiply corruption and almost completely destroy any oversight tools. Even state oversight, let alone public oversight. If the government backs the FCS, then tomorrow the official motto of public procurement will be: "Officials, here are 5 trillion rubles—go buy yourselves something nice. We take your word for it". Update. You can read RosPil's reply to the ministry's letter here.