Institutions and legislation

System of public procurement is regulated by BiH Law on Public Procurement (Official Gazette of BiH, no.49/04) with amendments and updates (Official Gazette of BiH, no. 19/05, 52/05, 8/06, 24/06, 70/06, 12/09, 60/10) and its basic implementation regulation Instructions for the Implementation of BiH Law on Public Procurement (Official Gazette of BiH, no. 03/05 and 24/09).

The Law defines basic principles of the system, prescribes procedures for public procurement and legal protection in this field on the territory of BiH and it is in force for public procurement procedures on all levels of government in BiH. The main objective of the Law is establishing the framework to ensure the functioning of the public procurement system, based on principles of fair and active competition, transparency, non-discrimination and equal treatment.

Agency for Public Procurement BiH is established by The Law (Article 48) as an independent administrative organization responsible of preparing legislation and monitoring the implementation of the Law and its bylaws, providing advisory and technical assistance to all parties in the system, monitoring of training programs in this area and establishment and support to development of the electronic public procurement. Procurement Review Body was established by Article 49 of the Law which is also independent organization and its main competency is to decide in the second instance on the appeals filed by suppliers who have a legitimate interest in a specific public procurement contract and believe that the contracting authority, during the contract award procedure concerned, has breached one or more provisions of this Law and/or its Implementing Regulations.

The Agency has its seat in Sarajevo, with two local offices, in Banja Luka and Mostar. Seat of the Procurement Review Body (PRB) is in Sarajevo. All relevant information about the public procurement system, as well as useful advice can be found on the official website of the Public Procurement System

Tender Procedures

Types of the procedures of public procurement, conditions for selection of specific procedures, procurement notices, applications, tender procedure, contract awards and obligations of the suppliers are defined in Chapter II and III of the Law on Public Procurement.

Contracts on public procurement of goods, services and works are awarded by one of the following procedures:

• Open procedure;
• Restricted procedure with pre-qualification;
• Negotiated Procedure with publication of a procurement notice;
• Negotiated Procedure without publication of a procurement notice;
• Design contest
Apart from these main procedures, contracts with value estimated by the contracting authority as lower than domestic value index are awarded by the following procedures:

• Competitive request for quotations (Value up to BAM 50,000.00 for goods and services and up to BAM 80,000.00 for works)
Direct Agreement (Up to BAM 6,000.00).


Procurement notices, contract awards and annulment of the procedure of public procurement are published in the Official Gazette of BiH and on the Public Procurement Portal (www.tenderi.gov.ba), in official forms developed by the Agency.

Procedures related to Appeals are defined by Article 51 and Article 52 of the Law on Public Procurement and the Procurement Review Body Rulebook.

Contacting authorities are obligated to use domestic preference treatment in the process of public procurement, by reducing the prices of domestic offers by preferential factor of 10 percent in calculation of prices of the offers for the purpose of tender evaluation. This provision does not apply for the signatory Parties of the CEFTA Agreement.

Tender Documentation

Content and use of tender documentation and specifications for various public procurement procedures are defined by Chapter II of the Law on Public Procurement and by the Guideline on Implementation and Use of STD Models for Public Procurement Procedures (Official Gazette of BiH, no.56/07).

In preparing tender documentation, the contracting authorities are obligated to use the standard tender documentation models which could be found as Annexes of the above mentioned Guidelines.

Deadlines

Contracting authority specifies the place, date and hour for submission of requests to participate in the procedure and/or for submission of tenders. Requests and offers delivered after the deadline shall not be considered.

Specification of deadlines shall be based on the complexity of the particular procurement, and therefore the time necessary to prepare the offer. However, minimum deadlines cannot be shorter than those defined by the Law (Article 21)  for domestic threshold values, and deadlines increase in the case of international threshold values in accordance Law (Article 6(3)).

In the case of Open Procedure, the minimum time limit for the receipt of offers cannot be less than 28 days from the date of publication of the procurement notice in the Official Gazette of BiH.

In the case of the restricted, accelerated or negotiated procedure:

• the final time limit for receipt of requests to participate shall not be less than 18 days from the date of publication of the procurement notice in the Official Gazette of BiH;
• the final time limit for receipt of tenders in the case of Restricted Procedure shall be not less than 28 days from the day of dispatch of the invitation to tender to the pre-qualified candidates;
• If the conditions to apply the accelerated restricted procedure are met, the contracting authority shall have the right to fix a time limit for receipt of requests of not less than 8 days, and a time limit for receipt of tenders of not less than 5 days.

If, for whatever reason, the tender documents or parts thereof, although requested in good time, have not been supplied within the time limits fixed, or where it transpires after the provision of tender documents that tenders can be made only after a visit to the site or after on-the-spot inspection of the documents supporting the tender documents, the time limits for the receipt of tenders shall be extended for a period of minimum 7 days, so that they allow all suppliers concerned to be aware of all the information needed to produce a tender.

Deadlines related to Appeals Procedures are defined by Article 51 and 52 of the Law on Public Procurement of BiH and by the Rulebook of the Procurement Review Body of BiH.

Links and resources

All information related to the system of public procurement can be found on the official website of the Public Procurement System .
Official procurement notices, contract awards and annulments of of public procurement procedures can also be found in BiH Official Gazette, Publications section and on the Public Procurement Portal.

The Public Procurement Agency of BiH develops and monitors the public procurement training system, but the Agency itself does not conduct the trainings directly. The Agency monitors the work of registered trainers who are obligated to carry out their duties in accordance with the Rulebook on Accreditation and Registration of Public Procurement Trainers (Official Gazette of BiH, no. 59/08). The list of all registered trainers can be found on the official Pubic Procurement System website.
 
In accordance with the Guideline on method of entery in electronic register of contracting authorities and tenderers in BiH (Official Gazette of BiH, no. 7/13), Register of contracting authorities and tenderers in BiH was launched, which provides contracting authorities in BiH to identify tenderers for various activities, to get informations about their products and services, business ability and references.