The Medical Procurement of Ukraine is consistently committed to the principles of competitiveness, transparency, and efficiency in its work. To achieve this, we carefully scrutinize our contractors, improve our business processes, and implement new tools.
We are always open to any scrutiny of our activities, but we insist that such scrutiny and its public disclosure should be objective and unbiased. It is also crucial that the approach to audits is systematic and standardized.
According to information publicly released by the State Audit Service, in 2023, they conducted audits of 20 procurements by the MPU with a total value of 1,234,309,680 UAH. Out of these, from the perspective of the State Audit Service, 10 procurements had violations amounting to 929.2 million UAH.
What specific violations are we talking about?
The violations pointed out by the State Audit Service in all 10 procedures relate to just one requirement of the tender documentation, which is the form of document submission by the tender winner. The MPU required the tender winner to provide necessary documents either in paper format or through the MedData system.
This requirement was solely related to the documents necessary for the conclusion of the contract. It doesn't concern the tender proposal documents or documents that were required to be submitted electronically as of the announcement of the respective procedures in accordance with the legal requirements.
And now, the most interesting part: this requirement was also present in the tender documentation of the MPU starting from 2020. They have already been subject to the State Audit Service's review, but until May of this year, auditors had no comments on the mentioned tender conditions. Even in those procedures for the 2023 budget where the State Audit Service found no violations, this requirement was still present. Therefore, all the auditors' comments on the MPU are being appealed in court.
At the same time, upon receiving the aforementioned comment from the State Audit Service for the first time, we took it into account and amended our tender documentation in subsequent procurements.
Expected value vs. the amount of contracts awarded.
The expected value in 10 procedures was 929.2 million UAH. However, the total value of contracts awarded in these procurements is slightly different, amounting to 782.6 million UAH.
How did it all start?
Last week, the State Audit Service came to the MPU office to audit the procurement of bone synthesis plates that we acquired as part of the UNITED24 initiative. These medical supplies are used to assist patients with bone fractures. The total contract value was 8,999,254 UAH, compared to an expected value of over 15 million UAH. In other words, the Medical Procurement of Ukraine managed to save over 40%.
These medical supplies have been completely distributed to healthcare facilities, and the supplier has been penalized for the two-day delivery delay.
What happens next?
The Medical Procurements of Ukraine team is fully cooperating with state auditors and providing all requested documents. We hope that the audit will be objective and honest. We will provide separate information on its results.