IX All-Russian practical conference-seminar “State and Municipal Procurement - 2014”

(October 30 - 31, 2014, Moscow)

On October 30-31, 2014 the Public Procurement Institute organized the 9th all-Russian conference “State and Municipal Procurement 2014”. 

The conference was aimed at discussion of the public procurement system reform, and application of the Federal Law No. 44-FZ that regulates the public procurement process in the country. The event was addressed to a wide circle of participants: representatives of client organizations (public agencies of all levels, budgetary and government controlled entities, and others), suppliers, authorized purchasing and supervisory agencies, educational bodies, and scientific and expert community. 

At the opening session the list of speakers included A. Khramkin, the Public Procurement Institute Director, A. Tsarikovsky, Deputy head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service, S. Prokofiev, Deputy head of the Federal Treasury, V. Bakhvalov, Acting head of the Department of financial control over public procurement, “Rosfinnadzor”, and V. Stepanov, General director, OOO “RTS-Tender”. 

The conference speakers delivered more than 30 reports during the plenary sessions. The main topics of the conference included: 

• The Federal antimonopoly service approaches to the application of the Federal law No. 44-FZ; 
• Approaches to optimization and centralization of the client procurement activity; 
• Establishment of requirements to the procurement process participants; 
• Application of preferences under the Federal Law No. 44-FZ, and bans and restrictions to purchase imported products; 
• Ways of appraisal and improvement of purchasing activity, including calculations and justification of the starting (maximum) contract price; 
• Procedures and reasons of client initiated contract termination; 
• Practical issues of different types of purchases under the Federal law No. 44-FZ, and planned transfer to the electronic system of supplier selection. 
• Additionally, a special session was organized for the managers of the authorized purchasing agencies, attended by more than 30 representatives from the regional and municipal government bodies responsible for the procurement centralization on their territory. 

The Public Procurement Institute announced the start of the procurement Certification system in accordance with Rosstandard standards (Rosstandard registration No. РОСС RU.И1247.04 ЖРЭ0 dated August 1, 2014). The new system offers an independent verification and certification of the employees’ skills; quality of procurement processes, procedures and systems, and confirms their conformance to the legislation requirements (Federal Laws No. 44-FZ and No. 223-FZ). The Institute acts as the central certification body of the new system. 

At the beginning of the second conference day the Public Procurement Institute Director Andrey Khramkin presented the certificates of conformance to the entities that had successfully passed certification tests: purchasing agencies of Novosibirsk oblast and Khanty-Mansi autonomous okrug, as well as several educational centers and procurement expert organizations. More details about certification can be found at росзакупки.рф. 

In addition to the collection of the conference reports, the Public Procurement Institute prepared and published the 10th edition of the “Reference book for public sector procurement”. The book is a practical encyclopedia of the Federal Law No. 44-FZ application. 

Round-table discussions were organized at the end of each conference days, where speakers answered participants' questions. Individual issues and questions were discussed during the networking breaks between the sessions. More than 250 participants attended the conference at Izmailovo Hotel in Moscow. Eleven cities joined the event via the videoconference: Barnaul, Bryansk, Vladivostok, Volgograd, Izhevsk, Irkutsk, Kurgan, Moscow, Samara, Khabarovsk and Chelyabinsk.