Legislation

Public procurement is the process of using public funds by certain public body, for the purpose of acquiring external resources, generally from commercial bidders. In order to regulate this process, as the part of public sector reform and in relation to our future EU membership, Macedonia has adopted a modern public procurement law, published in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Macedonia, 19/2004, as well as modifications and amendments of the Law on Public Procurement, published in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Macedonia, 109/2005.


The public procurement law regulates all main aspects of government and public bodies purchasing activities and provides them with the tools to be able to achieve “value for money” when procuring goods, services and works. It defines the main methods of public procurement, and steps to be used when applying them.


The public procurement law is supported by a set of related secondary legislation (published in Official Gazette of the Republic of Macedonia), defining the phases of the procurement process in more detailed way; the methodology on evaluating qualitative criteria, the procurement plan, the procurement registry, public bid opening, solvency documents, the appointment of experts, the estimating the value of procurement, the compulsory elements of tender documentation, low value procurement, and standard forms that shall be used.

All these documents, plus important supporting materials, like the Model Agreement Contract, information about decisions of the Complaint Committee and Standard Tender Documentation can be downloaded from the Public Procurement Bureau web page.

According to the legal and administrative framework for public procurement in line with the general EU legislation as well as the national regulations in Macedonia, these principles should always guide procurement decisions:
The principle of non-discrimination, according to which the procurer must not discriminate in terms of citizenship of bidder or in terms of country of origin of goods.
The principle of equal treatment is very closely related to non-discrimination, and more specifically it determines that all suppliers must be treated equally; they all must be given the same information at the same time and must be dealt with fairly, honestly and impartially, for the purpose of avoiding conflicts of interest and corruption.
The principle of transparency, according to which, the principles of predictability and openness must characterize the procurement process, by practising transparency of rules, opportunities, processes, records and outcomes.
The objective of these principles is to increase efficiency and fairness, for the purpose of obtaining best value for limited public funds, controlling the costs of the procurement process for the administration and the bidders.
Other important principles are the impartiality of public procurement officers, as well as their accountability in terms of their decisions and actions; keeping strict confidentiality about printed information, bidders whose disclosure would impede on the right of the tenderers to protect its intellectual property rights or its commercial secrets.

The submission of a bid is an offer to supply goods, perform service or execute work to the procurer. The main principles of this phase are the following:

The bidder should prepare a complete bid on the grounds of the original tender documentation. The tenderer must use the forms provided in the tender documentation and complete them without any modification.

The bid must offer final bid price that cannot be changed later during the process of signing and executing of contract, except in specific cases provided by the law.

Tenders may be submitted only by tenderers who requested tender documentation and paid any fee accordingly. Tenderers should submit the original tender in a sealed envelope. The envelope must be properly addressed and should contain all information relating to the announcement as well as number of bid, number and date of issue and a “Do not open” notice in the top left corner, preventing opening prior to set time and date for tender opening.

A tender that arrives after the final deadline for tender submission is declared late and rejected.

The procurer is responsible for proper storage of received bids. The procurer is authorised to exclude bidders if it has credible proof that the bidder has made an attempt to influence the further course of the public procurement procedure.

Processes connected with opening of bids are one of important tools to achieve higher transparency of public procurement processes. Bid opening is public and commences on the place and at the time set in the announcement, but not later than one hour after the deadline for the submission of a bid. Representatives of bidders may but need not participate at the public bid opening process. The main principles of this phase are the following:

Before the opening of the bid, the President of the Public Procurement Committee checks whether envelopes are damaged or opened and states the total number of received bids.

The Committee checks if a sufficient number of bids have been submitted and will then commence to read the bids if at least two bidders have submitted a complete set of documents.

When reading the bids, the name of the bidder, the bid price and currency, any possible discount, and any security restrictions must be read publicly. This public reading prevents later changes and manipulations.

The Public Procurement Committee takes minutes of the bid opening meeting. The minutes must be signed by all members of the Procurement Committee and a copy of the minutes must be sent to all bidders who request so.