In Sicily, a surge in non-competitive contracts: Ance raises transparency alarm
Ance Sicilia raises transparency alarm: in 77% of cases contracts ranging from 1 million to 5.538 million euros were awarded without an open tender; and in 97% of cases the criterion for excluding abnormal bids would always be the same. The General Council of the association of builders in Sicily, chaired by Santo Cutrone, met in Palermo in the presence of the national vice president, Domenico De Bartolomeo, to discuss issues ranging from corrections to the Public Contracts Code that did not solve the problem of competition in contracts and price revision, to the implementation in Sicily of the decree-law Salva casa and the regional urban planning law.
In the context of “limited competition in contracts”, Ance Sicilia has raised the transparency alarm in the island. It is now common practice for contracts ranging from one million to 5.538 million euros to prefer using the negotiated procedure, provided for by the new Public Contracts Code, to which a limited number of companies selected from a list are invited, thus avoiding the free participation of the market and any possibility of prior control of the criteria used for the selection of companies.
Ance Sicily, analyzing data available on the web, highlights that in the first half of this year, almost 77% of works ranging from 1 million to 5.538 million euros were awarded without an open procedure for the participation of all interested companies. The builders’ association, therefore, with a note, requested an urgent meeting with the regional councillor for Infrastructure, Alessandro Aricò, to intervene on the contracting stations recommending, in the name of “maximum transparency”, the use of the open procedure with the publication of the notice of the public tender, a process that ensures maximum transparency and the widest possibility of participation for all interested companies, to protect public administrators and economic operators. Aricò fully endorsed the proposal and announced that it will be carefully evaluated in a meeting with Ance Sicilia to be convened in the coming days.
In Sicily this year, from January to June, with reference to projects with only an amount from 1 million to 5.538 million, only 36 works with open procedures for 81.7 million, which is 23.23% of cases, are proposed. Instead, there are 119 cases of negotiated procedures for 260 million, which is 76.77%. Information about these procedures is only available after the award or even later, during the payment of progress payments. This is why, in the note sent to councillor Aricò, Ance Sicilia requests that the contracting stations be oriented to “prefer the open procedure to which any interested economic operator can submit an offer in response to a tender notice. This – Ance Sicilia points out – is the bidding procedure, also provided for by the new Public Contracts Code, which is more transparent and, in most cases, faster, ensuring the guarantee of both public administrators and entrepreneurs.”
Furthermore, Ance Sicilia requests that “in the case of awarding contracts based on the lowest price criterion, a rotation among the 3 methods of calculating the anomaly threshold for the automatic exclusion of bids should be provided. The rotation among the three criteria can ensure an anti-corruption function, to make the anomaly threshold unpredictable. Instead, for contracts awarded in the first half of 2024 in Sicily, the same exclusion method was applied in 96.90% of cases, effectively nullifying the “surprise effect” and the effectiveness of the provision of 3 distinct methods.”
In Sicilia è boom di appalti senza gara: l’Ance lancia l’allarme trasparenza
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