Among various important Hungarian public procurement law changes in Hungary, one of the most prominent is the significant reduction in the number of single-bid public procurements.
FREMONT, CA: One of the most notable Hungarian
public procurement law modifications in the projects in Hungary is a major reduction in the number of single-bid public procurements.
Government Decree No. 63/2022 (II 28), which will take effect on March 15, 2022, contains these and other amendments, certain contracting authorities would be required to conduct preliminary market consultations before releasing open or limited bids, according to the Decree's revisions (if the value of the tender is above the union threshold). Furthermore, contracting authorities that conduct a large number of single-bid public procurements must now implement a strategy to limit the number of procedures.
Conducting a preliminary market consultation will be required for the following reasons:
All contracting authorities,want to acquire goods and services that are harmed by a lack of competition. The list of such goods and services will be published on the government's electronic procurement system (EKR) on March 15th; and government-controlled budgetary institutions and directly or indirectly fully state-owned business entities that participated in a significant number of single-bid public procurements, regardless of the goods and services to be procured.
Preliminary market consultations could be a good strategy to keep tenders from being overly restricted, but contracting authorities have not yet employed this method. Affected contracting authorities must, however, conduct preliminary market consultations in the Hungarian electronic procurement system as a result of the Decree (EKR). This will entail publishing the tender's subject matter, draught technical specifications, and draught tender agreement; allowing any potential tenderer or other interested parties to comment on the published documents, and preparing and disclosing a summary of the comments received the contracting authority's response and any substantive changes to the documents as a result of the comments.
Preliminary market discussions, on the other hand, will not be required if contracting authorities state in the tender notice that if just one offer is submitted, the tender would be declared failed. Furthermore, in the case of specific procurement methods such as framework agreements and dynamic buy systems, no preliminary market consultation will be required. The Decree will also force contracting authorities to create an action plan if the proportion of single-bid public procurements in the previous calendar year exceeded 20percent. The action plan must look into the causes behind the high number of single-bid tenders and propose policies and practices to achieve the most competitive public procurement feasible while also reducing the number of single-bid tenders.
