Findings and recommendations of Promo-LEX for improving public procurements in the context of the Police Development Strategy

Promo-LEX Association carried out the monitoring and evaluation of public procurements made by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and General Police Inspectorate during 2016-2020 in the context of implementing the Police Development Strategy. The aim of the Evaluation Mission was to provide an objective image of the legality, transparency, efficiency and efficacy of the procurement of goods, services and works reported to the Strategy objectives. The experts developed a Report based on the key findings, which was published on 13 December 2021.

According to the provisions of the agreement signed in December 2016 between the Government and the European Union, the Republic of Moldova was provided 57 million EUR for supporting the Police reform. During the monitored period, the amount of budget allocations from the component of support for Police reform amounted to 593.1 million lei. The funds were managed by four institutions: General Police Inspectorate (GPI), Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), Integrated Training Center for Law Enforcement (ITCLE) and ‘Stefan cel Mare’ Academy of MIA.

A total number of 300 contracts were financed from the budget support and the average value of one contract amounted to 2 million lei. In general, the funds were used in three key directions:

• construction and renovation of police stations, pre-trial detention facilities and buildings of GPI subdivisions (33% of about 194 million lei);
• procurement of TETRA infrastructure and equipment (29% or about 175 million lei);
• ensuring the Police with vehicles and their revamping (27% of about 161 million lei).

Regarding the distribution between institutions, the largest allocations from the budget support, about 86.5%, were allocated to GPI (including its subdivisions), followed by MIA (10%), ‘Stefan cel Mare’ Academy (3.3%) and ITCLE (about 0.3%).

The implementation of the Police Development Strategy resulted in a significant increase in the volume of procurements made by the Police. Promo-LEX found that insufficient institutional capacities generated challenges in terms of staff and time for GPI and MIA in initiating and conducting those procurements. Thus, various problems were identified related to the procurements, such as failure to observe the principle of proportionality in formulating the qualification and selection requirements; discrepancies in developing the specifications for goods, works and services; admission of conflicts of interest; as well as inefficient approach to divide the procurement of goods into lots. At the same time, there was not a single and efficient approach to establishing deadlines for contract implementation. The transparency aspects were ignored at different stages of the procurement process.

In order to strengthen the public procurement management, Promo-LEX experts formulated a series of recommendations, included in the final section of the report.