Wake-up call from the Chamber of Accounts of Aragon. He audit report on public sector contracting of the Autonomous Community of Aragon, corresponding to the year 2022has detected a lack of transparency and non-compliance, also with current legislation, in public contracts.
The audit carried out and reflected in this report, presented today in the Cortes of Aragon, highlights the delay in the publication of the formalization of contracts and the lack of justification of the nature of urgency in certain contracts.
Furthermore, he points out the omission of the reservation of 3% of contractual activity to insertion companies and special employment centers and, on occasions, the objectives provided for by the contract law in relation to strategic public purchasing have not been applied either. not getting greater participation from SMEspromote innovation and development or apply social, labor or environmental aspects to contracts.
Delving into the contracts and commissions communicated, the report reflects that a total of 65 contracting bodies in the public sector of Aragon formalized contracts and execution orders worth 640 million euros. Of them, 2,708 contracts are ordinary with an amount of 513.7 million euros. There were also 407 contract extensions worth 31.05 million and 73 modified contracts worth 2.26 million. Likewise, there were 7,308 minor contracts with an amount of 42.97 million euros and 129 execution orders awarded for 50.15 million euros.
Within the contracting, the Chamber of Accounts of Aragon has detected purchases acquired by SALUD, for an amount of 134.94 million euros, processed without contracting file. Precisely, SALUD was the organization that spent the most with a total of 280.19 million, which represents 43.8% of the total awarded by the Autonomous Community.
According to the report, there are no reported contracts or negative certifications of not having formalized any contract from eight entities in the Aragonese public sector. He also points out that, as has happened in other exercises, The Aragonese Institute of Health Sciences duplicates information from seven ordinary contracts formalized in 2022 for an amount of 1.32 million.
Likewise, a total of 349 ordinary contracts and 1,019 minor contracts have been detected in the report. They do not identify the code of the contracting file and in 95 contracts awarded the tender date is not indicated. In 1,473 contracts The number of bidders who submitted offers has not been identified..
In addition, the surrender includes contracts from entities that are not part of the public sector of Aragon, with an award amount of 0.51 million euros.
Special mention made about Zaragoza Fair of which there is a non-compliance in relation to the advertising of the tenders in accordance with current legislation, which the Chamber of Accounts of Aragon points out could lead to the full nullity of their contracts.
Emergency contracts have been made, but their application is not justified
It also alludes to Ciudad del Motor de Aragón, SA, about which it points out that it has detected an error in the amount of the amount awarded for the contract to promote the WTCR World Touring Car Championship. Specifically, it is noted that the amount of the award was 25,000 euros, although it was erroneously awarded for 5.7 million.
The report also includes that the departments of Finance and Public Administration, Education, Culture and Sports, Citizenship and Social Rights and Health They did not publish their annual hiring plan. The same has been detected with other entities such as SALUD and the SARGA company. In addition, other departments and entities did so with the 2022 financial year already underway.
Regarding strategic public purchasing, in some contracts with an amount of more than 5 million euros it has been found that compliance with the effective payment of the contractor to the subcontractors was not verified. Furthermore, three of the contracts reviewed did not use social, environmental and innovation clauses as award criteria.
And, in terms of reserved contracts – the law requires that 3% of contractual activity be reserved for insertion companies and special employment centers – 112 reserved contracts were awarded for 1.99 million, failing to meet the legal objective.
In emergency contractingIn 2022, 56 construction contracts worth 71.55 million have been recorded. In this section, the fact that the Department of Education, Culture and Sports has carried out this type of contracting in cases in which its application is not justified because it could have been foreseen with correct planning stands out. This is the case of the construction of classrooms in public educational centers.
About the minor contractsthe report indicates the division into recurring benefits, which affects 424 contracts worth 4.7 million, which represents 11% of the total awarded for minor contracts.
Points in favor
However, the report from the Chamber of Accounts of Aragon also includes positive aspects. Among them, point to general compliance with active advertising obligations.
In addition, it points out that the total amount awarded for contracts in lots has improved by 8.5%, encouraging the participation of small and medium-sized companies, as well as reducing the average number of days of bidding procedures by 7.3. days in the open ones and 6.6 days in the simplified open ones.
Recommendations
The report from the Chamber of Accounts of Aragon also includes a series of recommendations such as approve and publish hiring plans in advanceincluding all contracts and review contracting procedures to open them more to competition.
He also proposes use social, environmental and innovation clauses when awarding contracts and specify more rigorously the basis for calculating services and supplies that is used to determine the volume of reserved contracts.
From the Chamber of Accounts they advise in turn avoid using smaller contracts for recurring needsas well as the improper and repeated use of emergency processing.
The rest of the recommendations are related to the need to correctly code all contracts that are formalized, especially the Aragonese Health Service, and improve the quality of information in public procurement databases.
Finally, they advocate that the Cortes of Aragon assess the adoption of legal measures that make the public purchase of medicines more flexible that are carried out without a contracting file.
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