Simplified Procurement

Almost every government customer has faced a situation when a participant in the last hours of the clarification period asks questions about the information specified in the tender documentation for simplified procurement, or demands the elimination of violations. Since before, customers could respond to participants in the system only during the clarification period, this led to the fact that procurement was interrupted.

In response to this, Prozorro implemented a refinement that provided a technical opportunity for government customers:

- provide answers to questions during the entire period of the procurement stages "Period of clarifications" and "Acceptance of offers";
- respond to requirements at the stage "Period of clarifications" + within 1 full calendar day after its completion.

The corresponding technical possibility is also already available on the SmartTender.biz site.

How It Looks on the Example

For a better understanding, consider the following example.

When publishing the simplified procurement, the customer indicated the following dates:

- Procurement discussion (until): 17.10.2022 12:00
- Deadline for submission of proposals (from): 18.10.2022 12:00
- Deadline for submitting proposals (until): 22.10.2022 00:00

According to the terms, the possible actions of the participant and the customer are as follows:

- participant: can ask questions and apply for correction of the violation until 17.10.2022 12:00
- customer: can provide an answer to the question in the system until 22.10.2022 12:00 and can provide an answer to the request in the system until 19.10.2022 00:00.

We would like to remind you that according to the Law of Ukraine "On Public Procurement", the procurement customer must provide a response to the application of simplified procurement suppliers within one working day from the date of their publication.

Thanks to this revision, it will be possible to significantly reduce the number of cases when procurement was interrupted due to the impossibility of the customer to provide an explanation in time to the participant who sent a question or request late.