Law on Public Procurement – Amendments

Newsletter 79

The National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia adopted the Law on Amendments to the Law on Public Procurement (Official Gazette of RS No. 68/2015) which entered into force on 12 August 2015, with the exception of the provisions governing the duty to report corruption, which shall be applicable as of 1 January 2016.

These amendments essentially seek to further improve the public procurement system (by increasing efficiency and cost-effectiveness of public procurement procedures, ensuring a greater competition among the bidders) and to achieve compliance with the EU directives which were adopted in this field of public procurement in 2014.

We wish to point out the most interesting amendments from the viewpoint of the bidder.

I. Small-value public procurement

Under the most recent amendments, the limit for small-value public procurements has been increased from 3,000,000 RSD to 5,000,000 RSD. Specifically, any public procurement whose value does not exceed 5,000,000 RSD is deemed to be a small value public procurement. It should be noted the total estimated value of the same-type procurements at the annual level must not exceed 5,000,000 RSD.

The contracting authorities must publish an invitation for submission of bids and tender documentation on the Public Procurement Portal and on their website, however, under the Law, they are now allowed to directly invite no less than three potential bidders to submit their bids.

In case of procurements whose estimated value is lower than 500,000 RSD, the contracting authorities are not obliged to apply the provisions of the Law, providing that the total estimated value of the same-type procurements at the annual level is also lower than 500,000 RSD.