MP Nikola Grmoja of the populist opposition party Most proposed in Parliament on Friday that Croatia, like Slovakia, should introduce an e-register for low-value public procurement, specifically for cases valued at more than €1,000.

“Low-value procurement in 2017 totalled seven billion euros, which is around two percent of GDP. We are aware that local bosses divide public procurement procedures into more cases of lower value in order to make bargains with their cronies,” Grmoja said in a debate on the work of the State Commission for the Supervision of Public Procurement Procedures in 2017 which MPs mostly commended.

An e-register would make everything much more transparent, Grmoja said, adding that an unsupervised 2% of GDP created huge room for corruption.

Marija Jelkovac of the ruling HDZ party responded that public procurement functioned in line with the law and that there was no wrongdoing in such procedures, notably those of low value, that they had to be registered and that they were audited every year.

Ivan Suker of the HDZ wondered about ‘professional complainants’, if they existed or not, proposing that if they did, the Commission should mention them in its annual report.

“We have the example of the Peljesac Bridge, do you remember how long the tender lasted,” said Suker, with whom his party colleague Branka Juricev Martincev agreed.

There really are companies that seem to be doing nothing but submit complaints, one such company submitted as many as 27, she warned.

Gordan Maras of the Social Democrats asked representatives of the Commission to say if it was normal for the city of Zagreb to publish a tender and agree on a job worth half a billion kuna without having the money for it in its budget, specifically the project to build a new cable car to Mt Medvednica.

Commission chair Maja Kuhar said that the Commission received 1,261 complaints in 2018, up 25% compared to 2017. The complaint procedure lasted 34 days on average and it took 14 days to deal with a case, she said.

The average duration of a complaint procedure was shortened by two days despite the 25% increase in their number, she said, noting that this was also owing to the possibility to submit complaints electronically.

She said that in terms of the speed of dealing with complaints, the Commission was among the fastest in Europe.

Kuhar also boasted about the Commission’s financial results, saying that HRK 15 million had been paid into the budget as the cost of launching complaint procedures, around 5 million more than the amount planned for the Commission’s work.

(€1 = 7.41 kuna)