TIRANA, June 22 /ATA/
The chairman of the SP parliamentary group, Taulant Balla, stated on Thursday that, “in the progress report of the European Commission, Albania has received for the institution of Public Procurement, neither a passing grade, nor a good grade, but the top grade.”
In his remarks in the Assembly which discussed the annual report on the performance of the Public Procurement Commission, Balla, responding to the deputy of the Democratic Party, Ina Zhupa, said that, “the progress report of the EC highlighted the experience gained by this institution as a procurement court, because this is a quasi-court. It is equal to the first level court, whose decisions are reviewed as a second level by the Administrative Court of Appeal.”
We, continued Balla, “have accepted all these years that we all read EC progress reports the same, in this case the EU tells us this institution has done its job properly. When the EU recommends the performance of Albanian Public Procurement Commission as an example to follow, which I welcome, and speaking the truth, I encouraged the cooperation between our Public Procurement Commission and that of Kosovo, to provide valuable assistance, and in fact we have turned Tirana into a regional hub of experiences. And I go beyond this to concur with what Prime Minister Edi Rama said. I believe that we should go towards a regional Public Procurement institution. It is an example, or it is a destination we should approach, because public procurement is and remains a challenge in all countries. I’m not talking here about the countries that intend to join the EU, but I’m talking here about the countries that are members of the EU.”
Balla cited the example of Romania, emphasizing, “in 2012, for only 10% of the public fund the tender process could be completed, because 90% of the procedures could not be completed. This also comes down to the fight against corruption and the reluctance of the members of the Bid Evaluation Commissions to participate in them. Therefore, maybe another model of EECs with outsourcing could be an alternative.”
Balla said that this public service has been reformed with the assistance of the EC.
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