New position paper "Proposals for the improvement of the implementation of the Public Procurement Act"

To see how important public procurement is for the Croatian economy one need only look at the data for the last published Public Procurement Statistics Report in the Republic of Croatia for 2018. The total value of public procurement in 2018 was 46,633,118.036 HRK without VAT. Accordingly, the share of the total value of public procurement without VAT in Croatia’s GDP in 2018 was 14.88%, which is an increase of 1.96% compared to 2017, whose share of the total value of public procurement without VAT in Croatia’s GDP was 13.41%. 

The current Public Procurement Act (ZJN 2016) entered into force on January 1, 2017. The Act prescribes mandatory application of the criterion of the most economically advantageous tender from July 1, 2017. 

The most significant amendments to the Public Procurement Act pertained to the harmonization of the Act with the EU Directive on public procurement, with the lawmaker attempting to correct some shortcomings made evident in practice by applying the previous Act. The three most significant features of the new Act include: primarily the most economically advantageous tender as the only criterion for selection in public procurement processes, followed by efforts to achieve greater efficiency through automatization and connecting of systems to simplify the process for both the contracting authority and the tenderer, and finally prior consultation (for open and closed procurement) for the purpose of more efficient documentation preparation by the tenderer. The goal of the Public Procurement Act of 2016 is to achieve the best value for bought items. 

The American Chamber of Commerce in Croatia has actively taken part, as a representative of the business community, in proposing provisions which helped define the Public Procurement Act of 2016 and would like to welcome attempts made by the lawmaker to improve upon the system of public procurement in Croatia. AmCham members have been monitoring the implementation of the Act for two and a half years and have noticed practices that are neither in the spirit of public procurement nor the original intention of the lawmaker. With this position paper, AmCham would like to point out such practices and propose changes to them.

AmCham's Proposals for the improvement of the implementation of the Public Procurement Act are available following the link.