The Agency for Identification Documents, Records, and Data Exchange of BiH (IDDEEA) announced a tender for the procurement of ID card and driver’s license forms worth 30.8 million marks. IDDEEA entered the process of procuring personal documents through the most transparent open public procurement procedure, which has often been avoided in recent years.
This move by IDDEEA came just four days after Transparency International in BiH (TI BiH) informed the public that, following a report by this organization, the Public Procurement Agency of BiH (AJN) submitted documentation on the procurement of driver’s licenses to the competent prosecutor’s office due to the possible existence of a criminal offense. Namely, at the beginning of this year, IDDEEA awarded a contract worth 800,000 KM to the company MUEHLBAUER without public bidding, i.e., through a negotiated procedure.
IDDEEA attempted to use the legal option to procure additional quantities that cost 10% of the value of the basic contract, which expired in December last year, but the legal conditions for this were not met.
Following the report by TI BiH, the management of IDDEEA stated in the procedure before AJN that they could not change the current supplier because it could lead to the procurement of forms with different technical characteristics, which would cause technical difficulties in the functioning of the entire driver’s license issuance system. TI BiH has argued from the beginning that such an explanation cannot justify the use of a negotiated procedure because it merely bought time, and ultimately IDDEEA will have to conduct a tender.
This eventually happened, and on May 3, an open procedure was announced for the procurement of 1.25 million driver’s license forms and 1.93 million ID cards, with the framework agreement with the selected supplier expected to be concluded for four years.
For a long time, contracts with the existing supplier of personal documents in BiH, MUEHLBAUER, were often concluded through negotiated procedures without active competition. Thus, the procurement of passports in March 2017, worth 9.4 million KM, was also conducted through a negotiated procedure, and at one time the Office for Audit of Institutions of BiH concluded that over 100 million KM for the procurement of personal documents was distributed without a conducted tender.
