• 20 public agencies fail to publish simplified procurement contracts.  
• These include such important agencies as the Government Administration, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Administration of the President, the State Security Service, etc.
• For six years now, the State Procurement Agency has been explaining the failure to publish the contracts by a technical flaw.
• The problem of unpublished contracts has been eliminated partly – in 2017, up to 50 agencies failed to publish the contracts.
• Except for procurements related to state secrets, the law prohibits the existence of “unpublished contracts”, as this considerably increases the risk of corrupt deals.

In recent years, TI Georgia has noted [1] on a number of occasions that simplified procurement contracts concluded by certain agencies are not published in the electronic system of public procurement, which the State Procurement Agency explained [2] by a technical flaw.  

Twenty public agencies (see the table) have stopped publishing simplified procurement contracts at various times, or they have never published them. In addition, some of them have only publicized several contracts.  

Source: https://www.tendermonitor.ge/en [3], https://tenders.procurement.gov.ge/login.php?lang=en [4]    

That unpublished contracts exist but are not published is confirmed by the SMP Module of the electronic system of public procurement, where public agencies publish consents given by the State Procurement Agency on carrying out simplified procurements. In the years 2020-2023, the Ministry of Internal Affairs requested the right to carry out 338 procurements by the simplified method. The Government Administration requested the right to carry out 26 procurements by the simplified method, the Administration of the President did the same for 11 procurements, the State Security Service – for 41 procurements, etc. 

The obligation to publish procurements does not extend to public procurements related to secrets determined by the Law of Georgia on State Secrets. Not all procurements of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and other agencies working of security issues are related to secrets. All contracts on non-secret procurements must be published.

Article 9 of Order No. 13 of the Head of the State Procurement Agency determines that a procuring entity must upload a simplified procurement contract to the CMR Module of the system not later than within 10 days after it is concluded.  

In April this year, TI Georgia sent a letter to the State Procurement Agency requesting them to notify us of the reasons why specific agencies failed to publish simplified procurement contracts and of the measures taken by the Agency to resolve this problem. The State Procurement Agency has notified us that, as a result of measures taken by the Agency, the technical flaws related to the publication of contracts in the CMR Module have been partly eliminated and that the Agency continues to take actions with the aim of fully eliminating the technical flaws. In addition, the Agency notes that from January 1, 2025, a new Law on Public Procurement enters into force, which aims to fully modify the electronic system of procurement in order to introduce the novelties reflected in the law, and the renewal of the electronic system is going to contribute to full elimination of the existing technical flaws.

That the problem of unpublished contracts has been partly eliminated is also confirmed by the studies of TI Georgia. In 2017, contracts of up to 50 agencies were not published, while today the number of such agencies is 20. However, this does not justify the fact that six years after we first wrote about this problem, the contracts of 20 agencies, including large agencies, are still not published. Six years is more than enough to fully eliminate a technical flaw. Non-transparency of contracts makes it impossible to monitor corruption risks.

TI Georgia calls upon the State Procurement Agency and procuring entities to pay more attention to the publication of simplified procurement contracts. It is necessary to make a change to the Administrative Offences Code which will make it an offence to violate the standards of publicity established by relevant normative acts in the process of public procurement.