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Letter to the editor of Tacno.net

25 December 2020

Re: Non-transparency of the United Nations: On how UNDP gave away millions of dollars of assistance to BiH to fight Covid (tacno.net, 24 December 2020)

This is to clarify the facts in your article and reiterate that UNDP stands by its procurement processes to deliver urgently-needed medical goods in support of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s response to COVID-19.

UNDP is fully committed to supporting Bosnia and Herzegovina in its time of need while managing our donors’ and partners’ funds with the utmost professionalism and diligence.

UNDP uses a range of procurement modalities, depending on the type of services and goods required, their respective value, and the request’s exigency. Procurement procedures are designed and implemented according to principles of the best value for money, fairness, integrity, competitiveness, and transparency. Detailed procurement regulations and procedures are available to the public online. (https://popp.undp.org/SitePages/POPPRoot.aspx)

The specifications and eligibility criteria related to COVID-19 procurement were prepared in consultation with end-users/beneficiaries (respective ministries at all administrative levels and health institutions) and relevant World Health Organization experts and UNDP experts in health procurement.  Among others, eligibility criteria depended also on the category of the medical items to be procured. To expedite the response to COVID-19 and save lives, UNDP developed corporate COVID-19 Special Procurement Measures that allowed for some flexibility to fast-track urgent actions, including delivery time as one of the criteria, thus ensuring that procurement tenders for some of the medical supplies and goods of high exigency were conducted in the shortest possible time.

As previously communicated to tacno.net, no bid-submission deadlines were less than 48 hours and all were implemented fully in line with UNDP’s established procedures, one of which is direct contracting. The value of contracts directly awarded in line with the UNDP Rules and Regulations was valued at under $2 million or less than 5% of the overall procurement conducted. In all these cases, “value for money” was ensured as a key principle and many such contracts were awarded to previously successful bidders for the same materials to urgently meet the increasing demand for supplies.

The names of  selected bidders and values of the contracts related to COVID-19 procurement in 2020, including direct contracts, are publicly available at UNDP Transparency Portal [https://open.undp.org/projects/00126570]. The open data portal draws data directly from UNDP’s systems and cannot be modified by the country offices. We thanked your correspondent for pointing out earlier this week that not all of the data was visible. The data was indeed cut off due to an unfortunate technical glitch in the data presentation. Our colleagues at headquarters, who manage the data, resolved the issue immediately.

In line with its procurement rules, UNDP notifies unsuccessful bidders on the outcome of a procurement action only if their offers were technically compliant (but they were underbid). Other companies can obtain access to information on the status of their offer upon request. In line with rules in place to protect the integrity of the bidding process, UNDP does not, however, provide this information to a third party. Individual companies are under no obligation from UNDP to withhold information on their bids, but standard business practice is not to reveal bidding information to competitors.

As previously communicated to tacno.net, UNDP takes all allegations about possible wrongdoing seriously. Anyone, including UNDP staff, contractors, partners and the general public, can submit allegations of misconduct directly to UNDP’s Independent Office of Audit and Investigation, using publicly available contacts

(https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/accountability/audit/office-of-audit-and-investigation.html#report). Every allegation is reviewed and, where appropriate, fully investigated.

UNDP also stands by its policy to not provide details on our staff.

Finally, your readers will recall that the 2017 case related to the import of raspberry seedlings was fully investigated and appropriate actions and measures undertaken. A press statement and the entire documentation regarding the case remains available to the public on UNDP’s web site. [link: https://info.undp.org/sites/registry/secu/secupages/CaseDetail.aspx?ItemID=21]

Respectfully

United Nations Development Programme in Bosnia and Herzegovina