United in aspiring fair procurement

On 3 June 2016, the Head of FAS Anti-Cartel Department, Andrey Tenishev, his Deputy Olga Frantsevich had a meeting with the Head of the “For Fair Procurement” project of the All-Russian People’s Front, Anastasia Mutalenko, where they found new points of cooperation in cartel exposing.

According to Andrey Tenishev: “Lately violations in procurement have become massive. The problem is especially acute in procurement of medical drugs and equipment, as well as in highway repair, maintenance and construction. With such volume of information, that has yet to be analyzed and summarized, any help to the antimonopoly bodies in exposing such violations is invaluable. Under such conditions, cooperation with the All-Russian People’s Front plays an important role for us, while high-quality information received from the Front often forms serious grounds to initiate inspections and help reveal violations of the antimonopoly law”.

Anastasia Mutalenko said: “Regions continuously perform analytical work to expose violations in public procurement because typically local people better understand the local situation. Thanks to FAS efforts on cartel exposing, in some regions representatives of business communities began to pay more careful attention to the facts of violations and forward the relevant statements to FAS”.

“Together with the All-Russian People’s Front, FAS gets a possibility to faster react to the fact of violations in procurement, which is  also important in view of the large workload of FAS regional bodies”, emphasized Olga Frantsevich.

In conclusion, the parties reached arrangements on a closer cooperation between FAS and the “For Fair Procurement” project of the All-Russian People’s Front, particularly, by exchanging experience, methodological materials, together taking part in Round Tables and workshops, establishing working contacts, as well as intensifying informational activity. For instance, in the near future, upon a proposals made by Anastasia Mutalenko, FAS representative will be speakers at the Round Table with members of central unit and regional units of the All-Russian People’s Front to discuss controversial issues of exposing cartels in the regions.