International organizations have given very low scores to the openness of Tajikistan’s state budget and the transparency of the state procurement process. The legislation of Tajikistan, regulating this sphere, does not meet the modern requirements of a democratic society and needs to be improved, believes Ikrom Kuchkorov, a CABAR.asia School of Analytics graduate.
Tajikistan received only 37.88 points out of a possible 100 in the International Budget Partnership’s 2019 Government Procurement Transparency Index. This is the lowest score among the 31 countries analyzed.
The organization’s experts gave a score of 17 out of a possible 100 points for Tajikistan’s budget transparency index for 2019. Compared to the previous period, this indicator decreased by 13 points (in 2017 Tajikistan received 30 points).
In Tajikistan, the main law that regulates this sphere is the Law “On Public Procurement” adopted in 2006. At the international level, transparency in public procurement is regulated by the United Nations Convention against Corruption, the UNCITRAL Model Law on Goods Procurement, the OECD Principles for Integrity in Government Procurement, and the APEC Transparency Standards in Government Procurement.
The authorities also declare the importance of principles of transparency in budget expenditures. President Emomali Rahmon stressed in his 2012 annual message to the parliament that electronic exchange of information between state bodies is needed to ensure transparency in the spending of budgetary funds and proper use of material and financial resources.
President Rahmon also noted that the executive authorities in the regions, cities, and districts must take concrete measures to increase efficiency and transparency in the use of budgetary funds, as well as to generate additional sources of replenishment for the local budget.
Public participation in all stages of the budget process is a very important element to increase the efficiency of budget funds use and reduce the level of corruption in public finance.
Transparency of the public procurement process is also important for the minimization of corruption and economic risks.
If society does not have sufficient influence on the budgetary process as a whole, including the public procurement process, it often leads to untargeted or inappropriate spending of public funds. Sometimes decisions are made based on the personal interests of authorized officials. This leads to the fact that contracts are signed with low-quality suppliers, and sometimes officials even embezzle state resources. It should be noted that in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2020, Tajikistan received 25 points out of a possible 100 and was ranked 149th out of 180 countries.
Transparency also plays an important role in the development of small and medium-sized businesses, creating a platform for trade and services for all market participants. A detailed analysis of Tajikistan’s public procurement website showed that goods and services are purchased relatively above market value. Most goods are purchased on a large scale, and wholesale suppliers are supposed to provide a discount in the range of 10-20% of the market price.
There are also questions about the expediency of purchases. For example, the National Bank of Tajikistan in November 2021 purchased a passenger vehicle for 1,336,000 somonis (approximately 118,000 USD). Only one supplier participated in this procurement.
Given that the average salary of teachers and doctors in Tajikistan does not exceed 140 USD per month, the vehicle purchased exceeds the monthly income of over 800 teachers. A 2019 analysis of Tajikistan’s public procurement legislation by Parvina Ibodova, an independent expert on public procurement and finance, also found that it lacked a mechanism for consultation with the private and civic sectors.
The public procurement law does not oblige the person responsible for public procurement management to use this mechanism on a regular basis. Thus, decision-making officials have no feedback from society, including identifying problems in the public procurement system.
The analysis revealed that the law on public procurement and other legal and regulatory acts of the Republic of Tajikistan does not comply with international standards and received a very low score. The Transparent Government Procurement Rating assessed the openness and transparency in government procurement of the Republic of Tajikistan in 2019 at 37.88 points out of a possible 100, which is the lowest score. The average score of all 31 countries that participated in the 2019 ranking was 67.91.
A detailed analysis of the data obtained from three portals: Corruption Perception Index; Open Budget Index and Transparent Government Procurement Rating show that the data of the above-mentioned indices are correlated in most countries. For example, Georgia has the highest scores for all indices, and Tajikistan has relatively low scores for all indices.At the same time, there is a correlation between the index of openness of the state budget and the corruption perception index, which indicates that improvement of indicators in one ranking, leads to improvement of other indicators.
It should be noted that the new state portal eprocurement.gov.tj works more interactively than https://zakupki.gov.tj/ (the main site on public procurement; at the moment many of the information sections of the site are not available) and every day there is an improvement in providing information on public procurement.
For example, now we can get a report on public procurement of goods, works, and services for a certain period of time, with a breakdown by regions and other configurations. But the developers should still improve a lot and make the portal easy to understand, for example, include visualization and statistics for the main indicators of public procurement of goods, works, and services.
Report on public procurement of goods, works, and services on 07.12.2021
Analysis of the report from 01.01.2021 to 07.12.2021 shows that the total amount of published lots is 2,285,316,598 somoni ($203682406) of which 97.6% were bidding with unlimited participation. The number of lots published is 76399 of which 99.8% were with unlimited participation. For this period, the number of lots resulting in the signing of contracts was 1120909277,24 Somoni ($10776227), 98,5% of which have been signed from the first publication. The total number of lots resulting in the award of contracts is 68345.
The number of published lots, which did not lead to the conclusion of contracts at the stage of summarizing the results (due to the rejection of all bids) with the method of bidding with unlimited participation is 72 or in the amount of 24227498 somoni ($2159313).
The amount of published lots where there are no submitted bids from suppliers with an unlimited bidding method is 86684865 somoni ($7725923). It would be very interesting to know why suppliers did not wish to bid for 90 million TJS ($8021390).
The Open Budget Survey (OBS) is an independent, comparative, and fact-based research tool that uses internationally recognized criteria to assess public access to central government budget information; legislated opportunities for public participation in the national budget process; and the role of budget oversight bodies, such as the parliament and supreme audit institution (SAI), in the budget process.
As shown in the graph, the index of openness of the state budget falls to the level of 2012. Independent expert on the budget - Uktam Dzhumaev justified the fall in the rating for the following reasons:- the creation of the Citizen's Budget for internal use only;
- current reports were not posted on the Internet resources in a timely manner;
- no Annual Report was compiled.
- Creation of mechanisms to involve the public in the budget development and control over the execution of the budget.
- Active interaction with socially vulnerable groups and minorities directly or through civil society organizations representing them.
The Parliament of Tajikistan (Majlisi Oli) has established public hearings related to the approval of the annual budget, but it should also prioritize the following actions
- Allow any member of the public or civil society organizations to speak during hearings on budget proposals before it is approved.
- Allow members of the public or civil society organizations to speak at hearings on the audit report.
Conclusions and recommendations
The international ratings gave very low marks to the openness of the state budget of Tajikistan and the transparency of the public procurement process. As it turned out, the Law of the Republic of Tajikistan "On Public Procurement" does not meet the modern requirements of a democratic society and needs to be improved.
The law should give more rights to the civil society to participate in all stages of the budget process, starting from planning and ending with the audit of the execution of the state budget.
Based on the results of the analysis, it is recommended to:
- improve the law "On Public Procurement", taking into account the prospects of civil society participation in the oversight and influence on the process of public procurement;
- conduct a set of measures to improve budget literacy of the population. Citizens will know better their rights and obligations of the state to them;
- modernize the public procurement portal so that all potential participants can directly publish their proposals;
- ensure the publication of open data on public procurement (preferably in the Open Contracting Data Standard format) to enable automatic analysis and build interactive analytical tools;
- improve technical capabilities, to make the portal accessible and understandable, to introduce data visualization on the main items of procurement, to enable a more interactive receipt of various kinds of statistical data.
The facts indicate the need for active participation of citizens in the processes of planning, distribution and audit of budget funds to improve the efficiency of the state and reduce the level of corruption in the country.
Rational and transparent use of budget funds will increase public confidence in the government and can give impetus to the development of a democratic society.