Turkey : Country Procurement Assessment Report

Abstract

Public procurement legislation in Turkey has not kept pace with the sweeping reforms undertaken in the national procurement systems of many other countries during the same period nor with the development of internationally recognized bodies of procurement legislation, such as those of United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), the European Union (EU) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Following Turkey's acceptance, in December 1999, as a candidate country for accession to the EU, the Government has committed itself to achieving approximation and, eventually, alignment with EU law in many areas, including public procurement. To that end, the MOF and MPWS have already begun the process of drafting a new public procurement law, a draft of which has already been promulgated within Government and on which both the World Bank and the European Commission have offered their comments. Clearly, it is essential that this new draft law should not only make up the ground lost in the 17 years since the GPL was last amended but also bring the Turkish law up to date with recognized models of best practice and achieve an appropriate degree of approximation with the EU Directives. However, it is unlikely that approximation, let alone full alignment, can be achieved with a single reform of the law. Rather, it is recommended that the Government should aim to develop a new public procurement law which meets the standards of transparency, accountability and competitiveness set by the UNCITRAL Model Law but which also balances the need to prepare a path towards increasing harmonization with the EU Procurement Directives. This report also recommends that: 1) The Government should make it a top priority to draft a new national public procurement law and submit it to the Turkish Grand National Assembly by October 2001. This new law should meet the standards of transparency, accountability and competitiveness enshrined in the UNCITRAL Model Law. The new draft law should be developed with appropriate input from Turkey's key development partners, primarily the World Bank and the European Union, and should be discussed and agreed with them. The new law should also be underpinned by detailed implementing regulations, to be developed and issued shortly after the enactment of the new law. 2) The scope of the law should cover all public procurement for which budgetary resources (such as the general and annexed budgets) and extra-budgetary resources are used, including the non-commercialized stat economic enterprises. 3) In drafting and enacting the new public procurement law, the Government should ensure an adequate level of consultation with both the public and private sectors. To achieve this, an inter-ministerial Drafting Committee should be entrusted with responsibility for drafting the new public procurement law and should be supported by specialist international procurement law experts. 4) To complement these measures, the Government should put in train a planned and progressive program of legislative reform in order to move Turkey's public procurement legislation, over the medium term, to alignment with the EU Procurement Directives by the time Turkey accedes to the European Union.