Changes In Hungarian Public Procurement Law 

November, 2013 - Dr. Zoltán Balázs Kovács

In this article, we provide a brief overview of some of the changes in the rules governing Hungarian public procurement procedures, changes which entered into force on 1 July 2013 and which are of a larger practical relevance.


The Act no CXVI of 2013 on the amendment of the Act no CVIII of 2011 on Public Procurement Proceedings brought about some important changes effective as from 1 July 2013. Below, we will briefly discuss two of these changes.
 
(i) Naming of new business association in the public procurement


Under the rules effective prior to 1 July 2013, if a participant/bidder received a letter of request from the entity calling for a bid, in which letter of request the participant/bidder was called upon to make a supplementary submission and to file the missing documents and information, the participant/bidder was not allowed to name a new business association in the public procurement procedure within the framework of the supplementary filing. Failing to comply with this rule resulted in the submitted application/bid being rendered invalid. In other words, if a bidder named a few sub-contractors in its original bid and then it subsequently turned out that the bidder would not be able to use the services of a given subcontractor out of those which were named in the original bid, the bidder could not name a new sub-contractor (i.e. a sub-contractor other than those named in the original bid) within the framework of the supplementary filing. In practice, this resulted in a situation where a company - otherwise capable of performing the work as required by the entity calling for bids - and which had a real chance to win the tender, was ultimately unable to make a proper submission.


As opposed to the above, pursuant to the new rules effective from 1 July 2013, the aforementioned prohibition no longer exists, i.e. participants/bidders may name a new business association in the documentation filed additionally as a supplementary filing and doing so does not result in the bid becoming invalid. In practice, this will most likely result in more valid bids being submitted to the entities calling for bids, which is also in the best interest of the Hungarian budget and serves the basic principle of the efficient use of public funds.

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