The Ukrainian economy is experiencing rather difficult times, leaving a mark on virtually all market processes: pricing, healthy competition, and economic regulation. This creates additional challenges for all market players and requires new approaches to solving problems. On August 17, a meeting-discussion of vendors and integrators of high-tech sectors was held, organized by the Association of Industrial Automation Enterprises of Ukraine (APAAU).

The main theme of the discussion is the dominant position of the buyers in the market, which generates price dampening and reduces the influence of non-price indicators during the tendering process. This gives rise to a paradoxical situation when suppliers of quality goods and services lose.

The event program consisted of two main parts: discussion and "brainstorming" on the example of real cases. The main areas of discussion were the facts taking place in the market and the negative impact and consequences of the "buy less" strategy, as well as the impact of electronic trading platforms on the current market picture.

"A typical market situation today is the reduction of procurement budgets, price pressures, and increased competition, leading to a drop in margins, confidence, and quality. In such a situation the result of the work is: lost-lost. It is increasingly reminiscent of "hunger games" from the same movie "- said Alexander Yurchak, director of APAAU in his speech.

Among the invited experts was Sergey Sagun, Deputy Head of SmartTender.biz. Public procurement reform has revived the producers' interest in the still unknown transparent bidding market at the state and commercial levels, so the issue was on time for discussion. The expert told participants about the work of the ProZorro and SmartTender.biz Electronic Government Procurement System as the largest commercial procurement market and Partner ProZorro in the field of Public Procurement in Ukraine. "ProZorro's main position - everyone sees everything. After the entry into force of the Law of Ukraine "On Public Procurement" on August 1, all over-threshold tenders take place through this system - this allows every taxpayer to monitor the spending of budget funds ", - said Sergey Sagun.

The issue of the establishment of individual platforms for electronic procurement in the practice of IT-Enterprise corporation was also discussed. Such systems provide a single and clear standard in the conduct of tenders and form new technological trends in commercial procurement.

"The opening for me was the number of already established e-procurement platforms from IT-Enterprise at large industrial enterprises. If you compare their rate of implementation and the number installed at large enterprises in recent years, then it turns out that this is a trend. From the point of view of SEA, this is the best tool against the very corrupt schemes with which they have been struggling for a long time at their enterprises. It remains, perhaps, only now to set up technical documentation, TOR and qualifications of contractors for accreditation, "- says Alexander Yurchak.