Starting June 30, all the public procurement must be done online, according to the new legislation in the field, Codrin Vulcu, spokesperson of the National Authority for Regulating and monitoring of public procurement (ANRMAP) said.

However, up to now, only half of the Romanian public authorities are signed in this system, hence they cannot be fined if initiating a procedure of procurement “on paper”. The registration in the Public Procurement Electronic system (SEAP) and the advertising in SEAP are compulsory if the public authorities intend to undertake public procurements, according to Vulcu.

Romania s Accession Treaty mentions more than 200 large authorities as the most visible and eligible to contract services online. The ANRMAP monitoring showed that more than half of those were not registered in SEAP. The reality was that many of those authorities were signed in but under different names than the official ones that were provisioned in the fiscal documents.

Vulcu recommended all authorities to keep the official names for public procurement registration.

The SEAP is still an instrument difficult to use, in particular for the smaller local authorities, who have asked for hundreds of derogations for 15-45 days. They faced logistics problems and qualified personnel.

The total value of the contracts uploaded in SEAP amounts to 80 mln lei, according to statistics in April. However, suspicion still persists as many authorities shave igned contracts amounting to more than half the total amount without publishing the participation advertisement, negotiating with fewer solicitants.

If the authority does not justify the absence of the announcement, the ANRMAP may fine it with 5,000-10,000 lei.

The SEAP registration and viewing the advertisements are free of charge. Following the registration, a digital certificate is given to the user and acts like an electronic signature.

The companies must pay 20 lei for each partaking in a public procurement, while the public authority pays a sum between 50 and 80 lei. Any authority that intends to buy a service or a product more expensive then 5000 euros must use the system.