You're reading: Procurement platform ProZorro rolls out new feature for business

Ukraine’s Ministry of Economic Development and Trade together with Transparency International presented on July 31 the results of ProZorro electronic public procurement system in 2016-2017 and its new feature, The Best Practices Index.

It is a new online ranking that will help Ukrainian businesses check the reputation and previous procurement of a state-owned company or state agency before bidding for their tender.

The new tool aims to boost competition as well as the quality of services and products procured via ProZorro, Deputy Economy Minister Maksym Nefyodov said at a press briefing on July 31.

“Now all tenders’ participants can see their score,  compare it with potential competitors and improve performance,” Nefyodov said.

It’s been one year since the parliament made it obligatory for all state-owned enterprises to use ProZorro platform for transparent procurement.

Since then, more than 990,000 procedures (tenders, auctions, and purchases) took place on ProZorro.

More than 24,000 buyers used ProZorro in 2017, and more than 115,000 businesses participated in their tenders.

In 2017, ProZorro helped the state save more than Hr 19 billion by helping find the cheapest suppliers through transparent auctions.

“Some people were confident ProZorro is going to fail. They told us ‘you are going to be attacked by hackers, suffer from blackouts and more.’ As you see, nothing really serious happened,” Nefyodov said.

The new The Best Practices Index means to help keep up this good performance. The Best Practices Index is an electronic analytical system, that automatically ranks and updates the data about the performance of state-owned buyers’ that use ProZorro.

ProZorro’s Dmytro Palamarchuk, who created The Best Practices Index, explained that now the index is calculated for 600 enterprises and companies, divided into 11 groups: schools, universities, local councils, hospitals, state entertainment enterprises, energy producers, courts, and others.

The creators promised they would continue to add buyers to the index.

The website shows top three best and worst buyers in each category so that entrepreneurs could choose the most reliable partner.

Transparency International, the independent monitor of ProZorro, helped to identify 50 indicators that form the overall score of a company: the number of disqualified tender participants, the total number of participants, open tender results, the number of orders and lots and much more.