Since 2014 the public procurement in Kyrgyzstan is conducted via Official Public Procurement Portal, located at www.zakupki.gov.kg. The portal is managed by the public procurement department of the Finance Ministry of Kyrgyzstan. As of the first quarter of 2017, a total of 3,371 procuring agencies and 14,649 vendors were registered in the portal.
The procurement portal had a number of shortcomings that the project addressed. One was the limitation of the portal in allowing full monitoring and analysis of the effectiveness of the procurement both by authorized bodies and other stakeholders and individuals. The portal’s analytical components were well behind the established international practices, and a number of modules were unavailable for users. There were no reporting forms for users that would give a general idea of the quantity and quality of biddings held within a certain time period. Searching for relevant information was overly complicated, including, for instance, finding the bidding record by a particular vendor or information on bids won by a vendor.
Within this project, several modules were developed or upgraded, including an analytical module for procurement monitoring, planning module, contextual search system, a module on contract execution control and others.
The project provided more efficient conditions for public procurement to users, including the business community. The development and implementation of these modules on the Portal ensured greater transparency of public procurement, providing an opportunity for civil society to have greater access to view and examine public procurement.
The project was supported by Soros Foundation Kyrgyzstan.