Ministries and major state-owned companies to make purchases via ProZorro from now on

All ministries, agencies, and large state-owned enterprises must make their purchases through the ProZorro electronic public procurement system from April 1 in connection with the entry of the Law "on public procurement", into force.

Censor.NET reports citing the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade.

The Law "On public procurement", which stipulates carrying out all public procurement in Ukraine via electronic system, enters into force.

"All the major government customers are now obliged to make their purchases exceeding a threshold via electronic system. We are talking about millions of hryvnias worth procurement of the largest companies in Ukraine including Ukrposhta, Ukrzalisnytsia, Enerhoatom as well as the ministries and agencies," Deputy Minister Maksym Nefiodov was cited as saying.

According to the ministry, the first phase of e-procurement system implementation begins on April 1, while the use of the electronic system will become mandatory for other government customers from August 1.

The electronic system has been functioning in the pilot mode from February 2015. Its use was voluntary: each state customer could purchase goods and services worth of up to 200,000 hryvnias via ProZorro as well as works for up to 1.5 million hryvnias. ProZorro allowed saving more than 1.4 billion hryvnias while operating in the pilot mode

"According to our forecasts, it will be possible to save about 5 billion UAH in 2016," Nefiodov said.

There are about 3,000 customers in the ProZorro system today, and there will be about 25,000 of them to the end of the year.

The right of ProZorro during its first year in pilot mode was reserved to Transparency International, after which it was transferred to Zovnishtorhvydav of Ukraine SE, which is subordinated to the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade.