UN excellence award to Public Procurement Agency

TIRANA, May 25 – The United Nations has awarded the Albania Public Procurement Agency service excellence award for the application of electronic procurements. Albania was ranked second in the Europe and North America category for improving transparency, accountability and responsiveness in the public service.
“Albania’s procurement system had major problems that directly impacted its effectiveness. One of the biggest problems was the barrier to private businesses and the community from accessing tender documents to participate in the process,” said the UN. This contributed to a lack of transparency in the procurement process, which lead to high-level corruption. The procurement procedures were documented on paper; however, the requirements of keeping written records on every step of the procedure documents were often not met.
In response to this, Albania became the first country in the world to develop an obligatory electronic procurement system for 100% for all public sector procurements above the threshold of 3000 Euro. The electronic procurement platform is a web-based application that enables secure transactions among Albanian public institutions and the national and international business communities. It offers a secure, efficient and transparent preparation and administration of all tender-related documents, removing unnecessary paper work and providing secure data flow throughout the entire process (web-site www.app.gov.al).