More than half of the public procurement contracts awarded in Serbia this year have been exempted from legal procedures, according to a government database.
The public procurement contracts are worth 6.5 billion Euro this year with 57 percent of the total value exempt from the Public Procurement Law, the data from the data.gov.rs portal.
More than 400,000 contracts have been signed this year by state institutions, public companies, local governments and other entities spending public funds. Around 40 percent of procurement procedures were conducted through open tenders on the electronic public procurement system.
The number of biddersaveraged 2.5 per tender, according to the National Alliance for Local Economic Development (NALED), while half of procurement procedures attracted only one bidder.