Immediately after it became evident that North Macedonia, and the entire world, is under the threat of infection spread with the new coronavirus, state institutions began to procure protection gear. It was a matter of unplanned public procurements that needed to be realized urgently and without any delay, whereby instead of regular procurement procedures the state institutions started organizing direct negotiation procedures without previous announcement of call for bids, pursuant to Article 55, paragraph (1)d of the Law on Public Procurements1: “…in cases when, due to utter urgency that has emerged as a result of events which the contracting authority could not have anticipated, the deadlines for other procedures cannot be applied. Circumstances that justify the utter urgency must be such as not to be attributable to the contracting authority.”
Policy brief on emergency COVID-19 procurement
Although procurements implemented under negotiation procedure without previous announcement of call for bids are subject to obtaining previous opinion from the Bureau of Public Procurements, they can also be implemented directly, i.e. without obtained opinion, in compliance with Article 55, paragraph (6), which stipulates that: “As an exemption from paragraph (5) of this article, the contacting authority shall not be obliged to obtain a previous opinion before implementation of negotiation procedure without previous announcement of call for bids, pursuant to paragraph (1), item d) of this article when the safety, life and health of people are directly threatened”.
21/12/20205