Act No 263/1999 Coll. of Laws on Public Procurement and on Amendment to Certain Acts as amended by Act No 557/2001 Coll. of Laws (hereinafter referred to as "the Public Procurement Act") came into affect in 2002. Regulation of the Government of the Slovak Republic No 389/2000 Coll. of Laws on publication of prior information notices, contract notices, contract documents and contract award notices (hereinafter referred to as "the Government Regulation") also remained in force.

The Office, with 101 employees on 31 December 2002 whose average age was 40, performed tasks arising from the Public Procurement Act and the pre-accession process.

In June 2002 the National Council of the Slovak Republic approved the draft of amendments to the Public Procurement Act submitted by MPs, which was then published in the Collection of Laws under No 530/2002 Coll. of Laws and came into force on 1 January 2003. Recommendations and comments submitted by experts from the European Commission (Directorate General for the Internal Market) were also taken into account, as well as recommendations and comments submitted by Italian and Swedish experts who co-operated with the Office under twinning project No SR 99/IB/FI/04, which was implemented under the 1999 Financial Memorandum.

The most important change made within the above amendment to the Public Procurement Act was the change to the definition of the term "procuring entity". Further changes allowed more extensive variability in applying public procurement methods and procedures by procuring entities operating in water management, transportation, energy and the telecommunications sectors, and time limits were set linked to the date of the publication of notices of invitation to public procurement in the Journal of Public Procurement (hereinafter referred to as "the Journal").

The Office elaborated a draft proposal for an amendment to the Government Regulation during the year, which was subsequently adopted by the Government of the Slovak Republic and published in the Collection of Laws under number 721/2002 Coll. of Laws and came into force on 1 January 2003.

With respect to the amended Public Procurement Act, the Office prepared a Decree concerning the content of preliminary notices, notices of invitations to public procurement, contract award notices, designed contest notices and notices on the results of designed contests, which were subsequently published in the Collection of Laws on 6 December 2002 under number 722/2002 Coll. of Laws and came into force on 1 January 2003.

In the first half of 2002 the methodological activity of the Office was affected by the entry of Act No 557/2001 Coll. of Laws (which governs the procurement of low-value objects, so-called "under-the-threshold procurement"), amending the Public Procurement Act in force at that time. The most frequent requests for methodological guidance addressed mainly low-value procurement, i.e. simplification of public procurement procedures.

The Office carried out activities in relation to the performance of pilot projects for common procurement by more than one procuring entity, and summarised its experience in the document "Evaluation of pilot projects and proposal for plan for implementing further steps in the application of common procurement by more than one procuring entity".

Pursuant to the Public Procurement Act, the Office maintains a list of entrepreneurs in order to reduce the administration required when verifying compliance with the conditions for participation of candidates and tenderers in public procurement procedures. A total of 2,283 certificates of entry in the list of entrepreneurs were issued in 2002.

In compliance with the Public Procurement Act and in the line of the approved "National Training Programme Policy for Acquiring Professional Qualification in Public Procurement", the Office, in co-operation with 13 selected organisations providing training courses, arranged professional training courses and examinations for applicants applying for acquiring the professional qualification in public procurement and also retraining professionally qualified persons.

The Office entered a further 1,702 professionally qualified persons in the list during 2002, and a total of 3,966 persons were listed as of 31 December 2002.

With regard to legal disputes, at the request of the Court of Justice the Office submitted its opinions on individual actions against the Office and submitted respective complete documentation to the Court. During the assessed period, the Office recorded a total of 20 legal disputes, of which 11 were decided in favour of the Office, 3 to the detriment of the Office, while 6 have not yet been settled. In this field of activities, the Office prepared opinions on proposals and suggestions submitted by other authorities of the state administration for comments.

In 2002 the Office also continued carrying out activities arising from the process of accession of the Slovak Republic to the European Union.

The Office actively participated in Working Group No 1 - Free Movement of Goods. Furthermore, it co-operated on the preparation of documents and other materials submitted by the Slovak Republic to respective European institutions under the pre-accession process. The Office was in regular contact with representatives of the European Commission (Directorate General for the Internal Market). Twinning project No SR 99/IB/04 aimed mainly at the approximation of public procurement legislation to the respective legislation of the European Union was completed in August 2002. On the basis of observer status, the Office regularly participated in activities organised by the World Trade Organisation within so-called "Government Procurement" (GPA -Government Procurement Agreement) and co-operated with representatives of the Permanent Mission of the Slovak Republic in Geneva.

The Office published the second volume of the Journal of Public Procurement in 2002, in compliance with the Public Procurement Act. The Office received 19,323 notices, of which 17,052 were published in the Journal, a figure by 5,165 higher then in 2001.

An analysis of the notices shows that 22% of public procurement methods were cancelled (1,247 procedures) for the following reasons: on the order of the Office (29%), because of the submission of unsatisfactory tenders (21%), because no tenders were submitted (15%), in cases where circumstances considerably changed in comparison with those when the procedure was notified and which were impossible to predict (14%), because conditions for participation in the tendering procedure were not fulfilled by candidates or tenderers (13%), because none of the tenders was admitted (8%).

The Office took 1,149 decisions in 2002, mainly aimed against the exclusion of certain candidates or tenderers and against the decision of the ranking of the evaluated tenders. The analyses showed that approximately one-third of the submitted objections were justified (27.3%).

In 2002 eleven foreign tenderers submitted their objections against the practice of procuring entities in relation to announced public procurement methods (4 from Austria, 7 from the Czech Republic). In eight cases they objected to exclusion from the procedure, and in three cases against the decision of the ranking of the evaluated tenders. The Office complied with their objections in two cases, dismissed the objections in 7 cases, and did not decide two cases because the submission did not comply with the requirements for submitting objections stipulated in the Public Procurement Act.

Under supervision over public procurement practice in 2002, the Office carried out inspections on 217 procuring entities who applied 342 public procurement procedures for procuring works, goods and services. Due to the fact that the competencies of the Office do not allow a review of the circumstances referred to by the authors of the submissions, the Office used the opportunity to apply Art. 85 and asked for the co-operation of other inspection bodies.

The number of "consumers" of the Office's outcomes produced by the Office also increased, they are from entities who had not been participants in the public procurement process such as law enforcement authorities, who investigated submissions in cases associated with reasonable grounds for suspecting that corruption and misconduct were involved.

In 2002 the Office took 3 decisions imposing fines. The fines were imposed in a total amount of SKK 0.113 billion (* EUR 0.0026 billion).

The Office held records on 7,271 procuring entities during the assessed period.

The total number of completed public procurement methods leading to the conclusion of contracts was 10,633 for a total amount of SKK 68.26 billion (*EUR 1.60 billion). The average savings of funds reached 4.73% of the total envisaged value of the contracts.

The analysis according to the type of procuring entities shows that the highest number of public procurement methods was completed by natural monopolies - 5,099 (47.95%). The most frequently used method of public procurement was negotiated procedure without prior notification, representing 54.44%.

The number of contracts concluded with foreign tenderers increased considerably in 2002 in comparison with 2001 (by 90.94%). Their total value was SKK 3.7 billion (*EUR 0.09 billion). The highest number of contracts was concluded with tenderers from the Czech Republic (65.81%), followed by Germany (10.47%), Italy (4.6%) and Austria (4.15%).

The largest Slovak procuring entities were Slovenské elektrárne, a.s. with SKK 12.2 billion (*EUR 0.29 billion), Slovenská správa ciest with SKK 9.9 billion (*EUR 0.23 billion), the Ministry of the Interior of the Slovak Republic with SKK 4.21 billion (*EUR 0.028 bill).

* Average exchange rate in 2002: 1 EUR = 42.699 SKK