How to get a government order without a “shaggy hand”
One of the main reasons stopping entrepreneurs from participating in government tenders is the widespread belief that it is impossible to win a government order without a pullback.
It is not difficult to distinguish purchases in which they are not waiting for you. It is enough to pay attention, for example, to the following provisions of the procurement documentation:
Requirements for goods for delivery or materials that need to be performed. If the requirements for one position are scattered in different parts of the documentation, and the instructions for filling out an application are drawn up on several pages, then you should think about the advisability of participating in such a purchase;
Duration of the contract. For example, the contractor, prior to the announcement of the purchase, agreed with the customer on the preparation of project documentation and developed it at his own expense for two months. At the time of publication of the purchase, the customer requires the development of such documentation in 5 working days;
A large number of commodity items from one manufacturer. Suppose a customer needed 100 computers from the same manufacturer. He contacts his “supplier” before announcing a purchase. He reserves these computers for himself at a discount, and the manufacturer promises him that he will not sell to so many computers at once or will not give the same discount;
Requirements for the participant. In the case when the customer describes in detail the requirements for the participant’s experience and certainly wants, for example, for the future contractor to provide 100 contracts executed for him, one should think about a complaint to the antimonopoly service.
The situation is aggravated by the heterogeneous practice of applying laws and conflicting interpretations of legislative norms. Until 2017, the Ministry of Economic Development controlling the state order was so entangled in the interpretation of Article 31 of the Federal Law “On the Contract System in the Sphere of Procurement of Goods, Work, and Services for State and Municipal Needs” dated April 5, 2013 No. 44-FZ (hereinafter – the Law on the Contract System) that within 4 days I issued two conflicting letters explaining the possibility of attracting subcontractors to execute contracts:
Letter of the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia dated December 7, 2015 No. D28i-3551: a ban on contract partners to execute a contract is a condition on the method and procedure for fulfilling the contract after the procurement, and not a requirement on its participants. Therefore, the inclusion of this condition in the terms of reference does not violate the provisions of paragraph 6 of Article 31 of the Law on the contract system;
Letter of the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia dated December 11, 2015 No. D28i-3620: article 31 of the Law on the contract system, containing requirements for procurement participants, does not provide for the possibility of establishing a ban on engaging a subcontractor in the work.
Not surprisingly, the authority to control public procurement was subsequently transferred to the Ministry of Finance.
However, despite the foregoing, there are a huge number of tenders in which almost any participant can win.
