OREANDA-NEWS. March 10, 2010. Developing the system of electronic auctions and control over their organization is one of priority objectives for the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia), reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

The key areas of the state procurement reform are:

- improving the quality of government contracts (financial security);

- transition to electronic auctions;

- motivating customers to save funds.

"It is obvious that electronic auctions are very promising. In 2008 state procurement procedures saved 241 billion Rubles to the budget, and if we add procurement by local self-government bodies - the figure is around 260 billion Rubles of public funds. For three year the overall savings reached 500 billion Rubles", emphasized Igor Artemyev, the Head of FAS Russia.

Among major shortcomings of the existing system Mr. Artemyev pointed out at the absence of search engines. He said that from 1st January 2011 any entrepreneur in any Russian town would be able to get access to all procurement offers through an official web-site, which would place information regarding all offers from the level of local-self-government to the federal level.

The Head of FAS Russia also said that FAS Russia jointly with the Ministry of Communications of the Russian Federation is close to completing a special project. In the beginning of March a new national website TORGI.GOV.RU will be launched - the website will publish information about competitive bidding for the rights to use of possess federal assets. Every municipality and every constituent territory of the Russian Federation will be obligated to place their offers on the website.

Staring from 1st January 2011 practically all ordering parties in Russia will place 70-80% of state procurement orders through five electronic sites. Under such conditions government officials will not be able to know the bidders' identity before an auction is completed, which to a considerable extent will facilitate competitive process and curtail corruption. Igor Artemyev estimated that reaching the "projected capacity" will enable saving up to 1 trillion Rubles per year due to the auction procedures.

In conclusion Mr. Artemyev said that the Russian legislation has several unique advantages in comparison with EC laws in terms of prospective developments of electronic bidding because of the absence of pre-qualifications procedures for the bidders and provides a higher level of anticorruption protection.