People close to the matter said Thursday some of the contracts in question are financed with EU funds.
“There are situations when the signing of a winning public procurement contract is delayed by months. Contracting institutions blame it on red tape, but there are also suspicions they don’t want to finalize auctions whose winners are not ‘the right ones’, and are waiting for the winning bidders to withdraw their offers,” the sources said.
The normative act was drawn up by the Romanian Authority for Public Procurement Regulation and Monitoring (ANRMAP), and targets to increase the country’s EU fund absorption rate.
The new norms will take effect within ten days after they are published in the Official Journal.
Under the current legislation, public procurement contracts may be signed only after a waiting period, which starts after the auction winner is announced.
An 11-day waiting period applies for supply and service contracts whose value is higher than the equivalent in lei of EUR125,000, as well as for work contracts whose value is higher than the equivalent in lei of EUR4.8 million.
A 6-day waiting period applies to contracts whose value is lower than the sums stated above.
European Commissioner for Regional Policy Johannes Hahn said recently Romania must attract nearly EUR30 million in European Union funds weekly by the end of 2012 to get the same EU financing in the 2014-2020 interval as in the previous financing period.
Romania has been allotted EUR19.2 billion in EU funds for 2007-2013.
Hahn said Romania must prove by the end of the year that it can use the bulk of existing EU funds in order to benefit from the same financing in the 2014-2020 interval and carry out ongoing projects aimed to improve Romanians’ living standard.
The Romanian Government targets to attract EUR6 billion in EU funds in 2012. Prime Minister Mihai Razvan Ungureanu said recently the ministers and heads of authorities in charge of EU-funded programs who fail to speed up fund absorption and eliminate problems that hinder the process will be dismissed.