Contractor selection: What should be regulated to avoid making things difficult for businesses?

ANTD.VN - The Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) is drafting a Decree on contractor selection. Businesses believe that the draft's regulations need to be legal and reasonable for businesses to easily implement.

Các quy định về đấu thầu phải hợp lý, hợp lệ ảnh 1

Bidding regulations must be reasonable and valid.

The 2023 Law on Bidding was passed by the 15th National Assembly at its 5th session and will take effect from January 1, 2024. The Law is expected to remove practical obstacles and create a new, complete, synchronous, and unified legal foundation to build a healthy, transparent, and effective competitive bidding environment for both the business community and the economy.

To implement the Law on Bidding, the Ministry of Planning and Investment is drafting a Decree on contractor selection. The draft is designed with 126 articles, which are relatively large and technical. The draft is expected to add many new regulations to guide the contents of the Law on Bidding 2023 such as: regulations on ensuring competition, preventing "blue and red teams" in bidding, shortened bidding packages, etc.

Sharing at the workshop "Getting opinions from businesses on the draft Decree detailing a number of articles and measures to implement the Law on Bidding on contractor selection", Mr. Nguyen Khac Hai - Deputy General Director of Vietnam Construction and Import-Export Joint Stock Corporation (Vinaconex) said that it is necessary to specify incentives for contractors, clarify the content and necessary administrative procedures so that contractors who are eligible for incentives can easily implement them as well as know what to do to enjoy these incentives during the bidding process.

In addition, the draft also stipulates preferential rates for goods with Vietnamese origin of less than 50% and over 50%, and must have documents proving that the goods being bid are of Vietnamese origin.

“It is very difficult to determine the specific percentage of domestic production costs, to separate, to prove and to verify. Therefore, there should only be one preferential level for goods of Vietnamese origin, or in cases where it is necessary to specify the percentage of domestic production costs to enjoy incentives, each industry and specific field will have specific regulations depending on the actual situation of that industry and profession,” a representative of Vinaconex suggested.

Approving the online bidding method in the draft, Mr. Nguyen Khac Hai said that this is the right step for the state management agency to publicize and make the bidding process transparent and according to the roadmap to 2025, all bidding packages will have to organize online bidding. However, it is still necessary to be flexible so that mixed bidding packages, bidding packages applying the two-stage one-envelope method, two-stage two-envelope method are not required to apply the online bidding method.

Commenting on the draft, Ms. Nguyen Thu Hang - Head of Government Relations & Public Policy, Johnson & Johnson Vietnam Company Limited commented that current legal documents have not unified the concept of Medical Equipment (TBYT).

Previous documents used some concepts such as: Medical equipment or Medical equipment to describe machines and equipment used in diagnosis and treatment; Medical supplies are types of supplies used in diagnosis and treatment for patients. In current documents guiding health insurance payments, the term "Medical supplies" is used.

The Draft Decree only mentions the concept of “Medical equipment”, but does not include the concept of “Medical supplies”. In fact, other laws (for example, the law on health insurance, the law on medical examination and treatment, etc.) and the following documents all have the concept of medical supplies, a list of medical supplies covered by health insurance, and hospitals regularly organize procurement packages.

According to Ms. Thu Hang, bidding packages for purchasing medical equipment are of a special nature and have a direct impact on human health, so they require technical quality, but hospitals are afraid that when detailing technical parameters and technological requirements, they will be considered to have violated Clause 2 of Article 23: “2. Bidding documents must not state any conditions that limit the participation of bidders or create advantages for one or several bidders, causing unfair competition.

Therefore, the representative of Johnson & Johnson Vietnam proposed to have clearer instructions on this provision to avoid confusion when preparing bidding documents.

In addition to the technical factors in the bidding regulations, Dr. Nguyen Thi Luong Phong - Director of External Relations, Sanofi Aventis Vietnam Co., Ltd. said that in many countries around the world, in special cases to ensure access to drugs for patients, special procurement mechanisms with manufacturers and contractors are also applied. The agreements can be based on price - output factors, limit the number of patients, limit the fixed budget, payment based on treatment effectiveness, etc.

“In particular, price reduction agreements with price confidentiality conditions should also be considered. The price confidentiality mechanism will help manufacturers offer flexible prices, suitable for each market condition,” said Ms. Nguyen Thi Luong Phong.

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