MOSCOW, February 17 (Itar-Tass) — In 2011 the procedure of auctions and tenders during public procurement saved Russia’s budget a total of 1.5 trillion roubles, head of the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) Igor Artemyev said.
“If we take the difference between the starting prices at which state officials plan to implement government orders, and prices that were set by an auction or tender, the difference between them on the consolidated budget amounts to 1.5 trillion roubles,” he said. “This is a trillion and a half, which remained in the state budget, which allowed to buy necessary medicines, more services, build more and so on.”
According to Artemyev, 8 million requests come daily on the single web portal of public procurement. At the same time more than 200,000 customers and 170,000 companies accredited at the electronic trading floors were registered on the website last year. “There is the main contradiction between these 200 thousand and 170 thousand - our main problem - underdeveloped competition,” the FAS head said. According to him, 200 thousand customers – it’s too much, so “we must enlarge the order.” He believes had the number of contractors been “at least a million,” the number of fulfilled contracts would be much higher. In the view of Artemyev, the current discrepancy is the reason for 60 percent of failed auctions.