TIRANA, Oct. 26 – Public tenders with a sole bidder continue getting a considerable number of contracts and huge amount of money from Albania’s local government units even more than a year after a territorial reform merged a previous 373 communes and municipalities into 61 municipalities.
Data obtained by Open Data research center shows municipalities held a total 207 public tenders with a sole bidder for a total amount of 1.9 billion lek (€13.7 million) over a one-year period from July 2015 when new mayors took office following the June 2015 local elections to September 2016.
“Public tenders with a sole bidder are characterized by lack of efficiency coming as a result of lack of competition or in special cases as a result of restrictive or clientelistic criteria by contracting authorities,” say Open Data researchers.
The country’s biggest municipality of Tirana led in terms of the number of sole bidder tenders with 22 tenders worth 159 million lek (€1.14 mln). However, the smaller municipality of Vora, just outside Tirana but covering most of the capital’s industrial area, held 5 tenders with a sole bidder worth 238 million lek (€1.7 mln) over the past year.
Lack of transparency in public procurements is one of the top concerns for foreign investors to Albania, surveys show.
