On June 9, 2016, the Odessa City Council's Department of Health held a tender for the purchase of medical equipment in eight separate lots for Maternity Hospital No. 2. The expected purchase price was UAH 1,600,000.00.
A total of five companies participated in the competitive bidding: UKR Diagnostics LLC, Brizanta LLC, Medinteks LLC, Kolar-SV LLC, and N.Z. Tekhno LLC.
As activists learned, the bidding for lots #1, #5, and #6 was cancelled by the customer due to only one bidder being admitted. The lowest bid for these lots was submitted by Kolar-SV, a private enterprise, which was significantly lower than the other bidders.
The proposal of the private enterprise "Kolar-SV" was rejected due to the participant providing financial statements for the first quarter of 2016 instead of the annual one for 2015, the absence in the certificate of non-imposition of liability for anticompetitive concerted actions, references to information from the Antimonopoly Committee, and the failure to provide a certificate from a service engineer of the medical equipment manufacturer.
It's worth noting that the reporting period for financial statements is the calendar year, and they are prepared quarterly, cumulatively from the beginning of the reporting year, as part of the balance sheet and financial performance report. The customer should have specified in the tender documentation the specific reporting period for which financial statements are required. Kolar-SV, a private enterprise, provided financial statements for the first quarter of 2016, as these statements most fully reflect the actual financial position of the bidder.
A free-form certificate of non-liability for anticompetitive concerted actions during the tender was provided. It's unclear what references to information from the Antimonopoly Committee the customer requested, but all decisions of this body are contained in a unified register, which is freely accessible to everyone—https://www.amc.gov.ua. The law regulating public procurement itself states that the customer should not require participants to provide information contained in open official sources.
It's also worth noting that Kolar-SV, a private enterprise, provided a letter of guarantee for the maintenance of medical equipment, both during and after the warranty period, with the mandatory involvement of appropriate engineers. It's unclear why the customer needs the name of the engineer responsible for warranty repairs in the event of a breakdown, as the appointment of a person responsible for repairs is the sole responsibility of the manufacturer and should not be of interest to the customer.
Moreover, the law establishing the rules for conducting tenders provides for the customer to request clarification of the proposal from any participant. The law also provides a twenty-day period for a detailed analysis of the participants' proposals and obtaining such clarification. Thus, the customer could have contacted the participant for any additional information, but chose not to, as the easiest way to cancel the tender was to cancel it.
Thus, the rejection of the most cost-effective bidder led to the unjustified cancellation of the auction for the relevant lots and left newborn Odessans without new medical equipment.
To address the identified violations, the Rule of Law public organization appealed to the competent authorities of the Odessa region, as well as to the tender customer, demanding an investigation into the illegal actions of officials, holding those responsible accountable, and concluding the necessary contracts for the supply of equipment to Maternity Hospital No. 2.
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