A disastrous Public Procurement Bill

In the explanatory part of the by-law there are undue references to European Union harmonization requirements. The law passed with the support of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the EU in 2002, was in line with EU’s public procurement directives of the time. However, it has today turned completely to an opposite way due to the changes the AKP made to eliminate all basic principles, whereas the EU adopted new directives for more transparency and accountability.

Bearing the real purpose in mind, the claim that the new standards such as the new EU procedure "dynamic procurement system," and the "electronic tender," make the last amendment necessary is ridiculous. And the real purpose with this legislation is to open the door for the ruler, i.e. the AKP government, to allow arbitrary and unlimited use of public resources by its acquaintances to enrich them and thereby to indirectly finance party’s operations. Now several people will come forward to defend that the old capital also exploited this very system and now the rising pious elite is accumulating capital; a mentality of "now it is my turn to rob." The figure is colossal: According to the Country Procurement Assessment Report, or CPAR, published by the World Bank in 2001, goods and services bought by the state amounts to 16 to 18 percent of the Gross National Product, or GNP. If we assume the GNP will be about YTL 950 billion, 18 percent of it makes about YTL 170 billion.

Going back to the old system with the AKP
Despite the warnings of the EU, some professional associations, the Turkish Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association, or TUSIAD, and even the Public Tender Agency, or KIK, the legislation is now at odds with transparency, accountability and the fight against corruption.

The KIK has ripped off the authority to conduct ex-officio inspections on tenders to see whether they are proper. The number of derogations exempted from inspections are being increased and the KIK’s tender decisions are kept away from administrative judicial control.

The law is not applicable to research and development, or R&D, procurements by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, or TUBITAK, in addition to the procurements by defense, security, intelligence institutions as well as the State Supply Office, Meat-and-Fish Agency and Machinery Chemicals Industry Agency. Contracts providing guarantees before tenders for emergency needs that may arouse in defense, security and humanitarian aid cases are allowed. Procurements up to YTL 50,000 and for situations such as natural disasters, epidemics causing loss of lives or special defense and security situations, tenders will not be held. The only way to get rid of this legal robbery enterprise is harmonization with the EU.

The EU introduces an opening benchmark for the "Public Procurement" chapter for negotiations, which requires Turkey to allow EU companies be given access to Turkish public procurement market. This would be very significant in terms of price, transparency and service quality in some sectors. However, a Turkey not seeing full membership target cannot show the audacity to open its market this much. And the government seizes this opportunity to close the system even more but make it open to corruption. As I wrote two weeks ago, if Gül is genuinely following the EU-related works, he should not approve this bill.