Is the electronic bidding a guarantee of fair bidding? Unfortunately not. And the point here is not the defects of the ProZorro system or of any electronic trading platform. The point here is the human factor – the desire of the organizer of the tender to hold the auction according to his or her own rules, which contradict everything else.
What to look for, how to check the organizer and ensure fair trading for yourself – let's look at the most common cases.
Before participating in the procurement, the supplier must obtain preliminary information about the customer. In other words, all that can be found in the public domain. Excellent analytical capabilities are provided by the ProZorro system itself. There you can see the rating of the organizers, the dynamics of the tender, procurement plans, various documents, etc. Dozorro website allows you to assess the risk levels of tenders of the organizer you are interested in.
In addition to specialized websites, ordinary search engines, reviews of people previously working with this customer, public discussion forums, internal analytics of electronic platforms can help in the analysis. All this will allow you to create a preliminary image of the organizer, based solely on facts and statistics. The Smarttender.biz/en platform provides advanced analytics that will allow you to quickly navigate the commercial space.

Scams in tenders for procurement

Grammatical errors

In the case of public procurement, the announcement of new tenders takes place on all electronic trading platforms, and if they are commercial ones – on a specific platform. Accordingly, the monitoring person will necessarily see all tenders of interest by entering a query into the search box.
Despite the fact that the problem of literacy remains relevant in the present time, it is unlikely that people involved in procurement will make grammatical errors in elementary words like "pen" or "detail." However, no one says that this is done by chance. This is a great way to hide certain ads from everyone, to avoid the participation of the masses and to tell about the "secret cipher" only to the selected suppliers.

Dumping

The easiest way to give a contract for a profitable public procurement to a specific supplier is dumping. Given the specificity of the tender, it is impossible to avoid competitive battles to reduce prices. The lowest price is usually an argument for declaring a supplier a winner, because one of the main priorities of government customers is budget savings. Accordingly, it would seem that the choice of the minimum cost looks quite reasonable and justified. However, too obvious and persistent price reduction to the detriment of the supplier’s company itself is a clear evidence of collusion.

Impossible requirements

Construction in a week? Procurement and delivery in a day? Or maybe some documentation with absolutely fantastic attributes? Why not, at least as long as it all fits into the framework of the law. Competent lawyers can arrange inhuman requirements in such an elegant way that suppliers who do not fall under them can only shrug their shoulders and forget about their application. Violation is present, but it is impossible to find fault with the document.
But if there is the slightest opportunity to prove the failure of the conditions, it must be used – ask to remove or change the discriminatory conditions. The most important thing is to correctly and clearly argue your position and operate solely with facts. If this doesn’t lead to anything, then after the auction is over, a complaint to the Anti-Monopoly Committee or an appeal against the organizer's refusal in court may make them nervous. In no case should such cases be left unattended. The positive dynamics of restoring equity in tenders suggests that everyone has a chance to achieve fair trading and competition.