From yesterday, August, 1 all public procurement at the expenses of taxpayers in Ukraine is changing to an electronic public system ProZorro.

This means that from now on all tenders which are exceeding the threshold amount (from UAH 200 thousand for goods and services and UAH 1.5 million for work), should be held openly: anyone can check how many, where, by whom, from whom and at what price tables for accountants of the Ministry of Education or a new car for the regional hospital have been purchased.
The ProZorro system provides online information on all tenders above threshold, which have been held by central authorities, large state enterprises and natural monopolies. Now local authorities, utility companies and other organizations that use taxpayers' assets are obliged to use ProZorro.

As for the so-called subthreshold purchases (at the cost below UAH 200 thousand for goods and services and up to UAH 1.5 million for work), usage of ProZorro for them is voluntary.

During the year of pilot project in the ProZorro amount of the expenses saved is more than UAH 2.6 billion, by the end of the year the amount of the expenses saved will be about UAH 5 billion.
The use of this electronic system simplifies procurement procedure. The volume of public procurement market in Ukraine is about UAH 250 billion per year, and this is huge opportunities for business development. Since July in five regions of Ukraine an advertising campaign has been launched to attract business to ProZorro.
No hryvnia was taken from the state budget for the project execution, all the work was done by donor organizations. In addition, the introduction of the ProZorro system is a major anti-corruption initiative and permits non-governmental organizations to track the spending of public funds.

In Israel, public procurement system has been existed for a lot more than a dozen of years. Depending on the final consumer, it is divided between three areas: procurements made by ministries and state companies, procurements of local authorities and separately – procurements of the Ministry of Defense. For a country that spends a significant part of its budget on defense, procurement transparency in this area is an integral part of sustainable development.

Government agencies that contract are offered the wide range of potential partners. The feature of Israel's public procurement system is that in the system of procurements preferences for domestic producers are introduced, especially for public companies: Israelis choose local producers if the price of its products does not exceed 15% of the price of foreign offers. Thus, in Israel, first, they support its own production, and, secondly, create a healthy competitive environment. Of course, to take part in such procurement one should have a maximum financial transparency.

Now all Ukrainian regional administrations are recommended to use this system regardless of the amount of the announced tender. I think it will be a good test for Ukrainian officials to check their readiness for new standards of resource management and will clearly demonstrate who is ready to do business transparently and who will remain in the past.