INTERVIEW: Still no accord on Russian new state purchase bill

Interview with Deputy Economic Development Minister Mikhail Oseyevsky

MOSCOW, Feb 20 (PRIME) -- Russia’s Economic Development Ministry and the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) are at odds over an amended bill on state purchases envisaging the introduction of a federal contract system, Deputy Economic Development Minister Mikhail Oseyevsky said Monday in an interview with PRIME.

“We have actively communicated with the antitrust service recently, and our counterparts were ready to discuss some technical issues, not fundamental ones,” Oseyevsky said.

In December 2011, President Dmitry Medvedev set the deadline for submitting the bill to the State Duma, the lower house of the country’s parliament, for July 1. The existing guidelines for government purchases have been heavily criticized by authorities and businessmen as multiple violations have been registered due to a lack of transparency.

“We have been trying to have an (efficient) conversation with our counterparts from the antimonopoly body, but now have no more time for useless talks,” Oseyevsky said.

He said that the antirust service still believed that the federal law on state purchases approved in July 2005, or the so-called 94-FZ law, should not be changed. “The antitrust service is sure that it is the only efficient anticorruption law,” Oseyevsky said.

“We do not believe in the 94-FZ law, and we consider that this system should be fundamentally changed, but there were some positive points in the 94-FZ law, and we must keep them for another stage of the development (of the state purchase system),” Oseyevsky said.

The preparations for the launch of the newly proposed federal contract system are going on – the amended bill on state purchases had already been sent for official interdepartmental consideration, Oseyevsky added.

Regarding the version of the bill proposed by the antitrust service, Oseyevsky said that the antimonopoly body had not proposed anything new. “The federal contract system recently proposed by the antimonopoly service is not a bill, it is a farce,” he said, adding that the antitrust service did not change the proposals it put forward in September–November 2011, though the proposals were then rejected by the government.

“We have outlined the bill and now we are going to work out its legal framework,” Oseyevsky said. He added that the top priority and the most debatable issue was a list of goods that were to be purchased at electronic auctions.

Oseyevsky also said that the government was expected to consider and approve the criteria of selecting electronic trading floors in accordance with the amended bill. “This procedure should be open,” he said.

Separately, Oseyevsky, who is also responsible for the development of small-sized businesses, said that the government planned to allocate 20.8 billion rubles from the federal budget to support small enterprises in 2012. “Modernization of the economy and innovative development are still our priorities,” he said.

(29.9982 rubles – U.S. $1)

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