OREANDA-NEWS. May 28, 2009. "The Federal Law on State and Municipal Procurement of Goods, Works and Services" includes a package of measures aimed at protecting the interests of the state customers against unfair suppliers", said Mikhail Yevraev, the Head of the FAS Russia's Department for Control over State Procurement at the seminar of the Arbitration Courts' judges organized by the Russian Academy of Administrative Service, of the President of the Russian Federation, reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

Mikhail Yevraev informed that avoiding contract execution or its undue execution leads to including those suppliers on the Register of Unfair Suppliers. Currently the Register lists around 2000 unfair suppliers.

The Law also allows setting a requirement for mandatory financial guarantees of contract obligations.

According to the Head of the FAS Russia's Department, another effective remedy against unfair suppliers is reducing advance payments to the minimum. "Unfair suppliers rarely participate in tenders if the ordering party set the requirements of a bank guarantee and does not work under an advance payment scheme", is convinced Mikhail Yevraev.

The FAS Russia's representative drew attention of the audience to the need for the ordering party to more clearly specify in the tender documentation requirements to the quality of the supplied goods, works and services. Poorly specified quality requirements can result in receiving the goods, works or services of unsatisfactory quality. Also at an auction the ordering party can specify the goods trade mark in the auction documentation with mandatory addition "or its equivalent", giving the equivalence parameters.

Mikhail Yevraev also said that FAS Russia is going to form the Expert Council on State Procurement, which will discuss controversial issues of the current legislation.

"Bid-rigging collusion is on of the most painful problems at the moment", told Mikhail Yevraev to the judges. In his opinion, introducing electronic auctions will considerably cut down suppliers' ability to agree between themselves on prices or market distribution. "For the first 18 months customers' participation in the e-auctions will be voluntary; after that there will be no trading in the form of auctions or quotation requests. Everybody will go through standard e-auctions or short e-auctions", pointed out Mikhail Yevraev.