Last Thursday June 19th, the presentation about ESIDIS, the national e-procurement system, which took part at the Business Association of Medical and Biotechnological Products highlighted a new era of public procurement in Greece. The presentation, led by a representative of the Division of Information of the General Secretariat of Commerce (SGC) of the Ministry of Development, focused on the provisions of Law 4155/2013 (Government Gazette 120/A/29-05-2013) as amended by Law 4254/2014 (FEK85/A/07 -04-2014).
‘PROMETHEUS’: Mandatory use for contracts above 60.000 €
ESIDIS, the central site at www.promitheus.gov.gr concerns public procurements in Greece with a budget of more than €60,000 (excluding VAT) and its use is mandatory from October 1st, 2014 for all Greek health bodies.
In this portal, features include the preparation and notice publication of a competition, the submission of bids, evaluation and contract awards; the aim is to enable contract monitoring, electronic orders and invoicing, as well as electronic payments. In this method, authorities expect to implement new techniques in procurement procedures which include electronic auctions, dynamic purchasing systems and provisions of the Framework Agreement.
Extension of the compulsory character and a central Contracts Registry, the key points of the new draft Law
In the next few days, a new draft Law will announce consolidation of public procurements and the proclamation of the SGC and the Health Procurement Commission (EPY) into Central Contracting Authorities.
In this way the ESIDIS will involve:
a. Extensive and compulsory implementation of an electronic process on Products and Services
b. A full central Electronic Contracts Registry
The ambition of the system is to achieve of objectives some most important benefits:
* Reduction on spending on public procurements
* Reduction in costs and process time
* Improvement in transparency and enforcement of competition
* Improvement of communication lines between interested parties
* Cost reduction in companies participating to competitions by issuing digital certificates from the Certification Authority www.yap.gov.gr
Moreover, the representative of the Information Department informed us that the implementation of the Electronic Contracts Registry will go hand-in-hand with the operation of the Registry of Suppliers, facilitating to a great extent electronic-only filing (and therefore exterminating the need for filing hard copies in the process flow).
The comment of our office
In a constantly evolving international environment, the implementation of electronic procurement and the simultaneous implementation of a Registry of Suppliers will bring the inevitable modernization and coveted simplification of the award procedures.
Published on Health Daily on July 4 2014
