Continuing the 9th session, on the morning of May 17, Minister of Finance Nguyen Van Thang presented a report to the National Assembly of the Law on Amending and Supplementing a number of articles of the Bidding Law; Law on Investment by the method of public -private partnership; Customs Law; Law on Export and Import Tax; Investment Law; Law on Public Investment; Law on management and use of public assets.
Expanding the subjects of bidding
The Law on Bidding (amended) has added a principle allowing investors and competent authorities, based on the scale, nature, and actual conditions of the bidding package, to choose and apply appropriate forms of contractor selection (bidding, bid designation, etc.) on the basis of ensuring quality, progress, efficiency, and accountability.
At the same time, expand the form of bidding designation, selection of contractors and investors in special cases.
The draft Law supplements and expands cases of applying the form of bidding, investor designation and selection of contractors and investors in special cases for packages and projects that need to ensure national interests or have specific requirements for research, application and development of science and technology, meeting the requirements of speeding up the implementation of large, important, urgent projects...
However, in the report reviewing the above content, the National Assembly's Economic and Financial Committee said that this regulation could create conditions to shorten the time for units using the budget, but could easily lead to the emergence of a mechanism of asking for - giving, taking advantage of policies, bidding, and appointing bids within a narrow scope for some businesses or for related businesses.
Therefore, small and medium-sized enterprises have difficulty accessing public procurement and participating in public investment projects.
"Therefore, it is recommended that the Government carefully assess the policy impact, clearly report on the political basis and practical basis for the National Assembly to consider and decide," said Chairman of the Economic and Financial Committee Phan Van Mai.
Cutting down, simplifying procedures, shortening bidding time
According to the Government's submission on the Law on Bidding (amended), in order to reduce, simplify procedures, and shorten the time for bidding, the draft Law is amended and supplemented in the direction of abolishing procedures for appraisal of contractor selection results; eliminating some procedures, online bidding operations and some criteria for evaluating bidding documents to shorten time, and cut procedures in bidding.
Abolish the role of the bidding party and transfer some tasks of the bidding party to the expert group and investor to streamline and eliminate intermediaries in the process of selecting contractors.
Competitiveness is not applied to public service units and enterprises with the same management agency.
At the same time, the draft Law amends regulations on bidding and competitive bidding in the direction of the Law only stipulating principles and assigning the Government to specify in detail these forms to create a flexible, proactive and timely mechanism for the Government to regulate cases of bidding when necessary to speed up the progress of large, important and urgent projects...
