Amendments to the Law on Public Procurement

Newsletter 73

Reductions in preferences for local bidders and preferences for goods of domestic origin

I. Introduction

National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia adopted the Law on Amendments to the Law on Public Procurement (“Official Gazette of RS”, No.14 /2015), which entered into force on 12 February 2015.

These amendments essentially seek to reduce the preferences which, in the process of evaluation of bids, had been given under the law to the domestic bidders and the goods of domestic origin. This is a result of aligning the Law on Public Procurement with the provisions of the Law on Ratification of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement between the European Communities and Their Member States, of the One Part, and the Republic of Serbia, of the Other Part („Official Gazette of RS” – International Agreements, No. 83/2008) (hereinafter the Agreement), given that Article 76 of the Agreement provides for a gradual reduction of domestic preferences in a period of five (5) years from the entry into force of the Agreement. 

II. The criterion of economically most advantageous bid

The application of this criterion entails that the preference for the bids of domestic bidders or the bidders offering goods of domestic origin (together: domestic bid) has been reduced from 10 to 5 weighting points in relation to the bids of foreign bidders or the bidders offering goods of foreign origin (together: foreign bid), i.e. the contracting authority is obliged to select a domestic bid provided that the difference in the final sum of the weighting points between the best domestic bid and the best foreign bid does not exceed 5 weighting points in favour of the best foreign bid.