14 Nov 2011

Ukrainian Citizens Fight Lack of Transparency in Public Procurement

A document published last week by the Creative Union TORO (logo pictured here), currently Transparency International’s contact group in Ukraine, reports about their successful initiative to counter a new public procurement bill that would make contracting procedures less transparent.

According to TORO, bill 7532 introduced in 2010 would potentially aggravate even more the numerous inefficiencies that exist in the Ukranian public procurement system, among which the lack of an effective tender control mechanism.

This situation gave TORO an incentive to start a Civic Alliance for the integrity of public procurement in Ukraine, in which several non-governmental organizations took part. Created in February 2011, the alliance began issuing a statement to position itself against the bill and presented a petition to block its adoption.

In June, the movement sent a letter to the President with a list of recommendations for ammendments to the bill. In parallel the alliance also conducted various activities to increase public pressure around the issue. Finally, the movement’s requests were welcomed by the President, who included the recommended ammendments to the final version of the law.

Read the full text Civil Society Unites to Fight Corruption on TORO’s website.