Law amendment by the Ministry of Infrastructure aims to extricate public projects

The Ministry of Infrastructure is preparing radical changes in the law on public procurements in order to unblock public works, in cooperation with the constructions industry.

According to information of ypodomes.com, the goal is for all the improvement arrangements to be passed through the Parliament at the end of May-beginning of summer allowing the “release” of the projects.

Almost from the first day in the Ministry, Mr. Kostas Karamanlis has been talking about these changes, as the existing status quo has been very difficult both for the completion of the tenders and the execution of the projects.

As ypodomes.com learns, two basic important changes are examined. The first is to combat the large discounts that have emerged as the number one problem in the construction industry. In this case, the introduction to the score of the participants, additional quality and financial criteria that ensure the ability of the potential contractor to undertake the project.

In this way, it is believed that companies that are pushed into big discounts will be discouraged to undertake a project that will not be able to complete it. The same is examined about project studies whose discounts nowadays have gone beyond all limits, reaching even 90%.

The second important change is the provision of private supervision over the projects that will ensure the most efficient cooperation between the contracting authority and the contractor resulting into works progressing faster.

According to sources of ypodomes.com that are close to the issue, today there is a clear shortage in executives in the contracting authorities. As a result, many times, even if a project has no other problems, it could be blocked due to difficulties related to its supervision and consequently the absorption of funds (European in many cases), but also the payment of contractors which, in turn, bring works to a standstill.

Aiming to simplify the procedures

Overall, the aim of the improvements in Law 4412/2016 for public procurements is to simplify the assignment process, strengthen transparency, link the completion time of the projects with the guarantees and make changes in the project execution process based on identified problems.

So far, there have been a total of 4 meetings between institutions and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport. Two of them were teleconferences and the other two in the Ministry and at least two more are being prepared to specify the targeted interventions.

The bodies, for their part, demand that the registries of the technical enterprises of the Ministry to be renewed, so that those invited to the public tenders meet the criteria in accordance with the requirements and developments of the market.