General Information about the State Procurement Agency of Georgia

The State Procurement Agency of Georgia [SPA] is an independent legal entity of public law, operating under direct supervision of the Government of Georgia (Prime Minister’s Office, Administration of the Government of Georgia). The Prime Minister of Georgia appoints and dismiss the chairperson of the Agency.  The Government of Georgia approves the structure, statute, staffing and budget of the Agency.

The Agency is utilizing funds from:

a) targeted funds allocated from the State Budget of Georgia;

b) fees paid by contracting authorities [CA] and economic operators [EO], interested in participating in public procurement;

c) other revenues, permitted by the legislation of Georgia. 

The State Procurement Agency is a service provider which, considers the interests of public, serves customers (public sector, business community and civil society) of Public Procurement operations, by taking into consideration of their needs and demands, develops Georgian Electronic Government Procurement System (Ge-GP) and procedures/tools that will ensure effective and transparent business communication and transaction of a CA and an EO. It supports the training sessions, building of relevant capacity of involved parties, provides healthy environment by means of developing legislative initiatives, mitigating corruption risks, generalizing successful experience and introducing good governance practices.

Goals of the Agency are:

Ø  Supervision and monitoring of legality of public procurement procedures and transactions;

Ø  Securing the principles of publicity, transparency, fairness and nondiscrimination when accomplishing relevant public procurement transactions;

Ø  Ensuring precise procedures and calculations as defined by law, fair competition as well as rational and free choice of participants in the public procurement transactions;

Ø  Supporting development and maintenance of operations of the Georgian Electronic Government Procurement System and increasing level of trust towards the professional society and business community;

Ø  Improvement of legislation, regulating competition and public procurement, Public Private Partnership (PPP), Concessions, administrative review tribunals and ensuring its compliance with internationally recognized standards and the best practices.

The functions of the Agency are:   

ü  Drafting pieces of public procurement primary legislation with coordination to other government stakeholders and providing it to the PM office (Administration of the GoG);

ü  Developing and issuing public procurement regulatory legislation (secondary legislation);

ü  Defining public procurement process regulatory policy;

ü  Coordination and monitoring of activities related to public procurement ecosystem;

ü  Studying and analyzing of current landscape/framework of public procurement field and providing relevant proposals to the Government/Parliament of Georgia;  

ü  Preparing special learning programs, curriculums, teaching aids and methodological materials (user manuals and guidelines) and standard forms of documentation, arranging workshops and training sessions for central government entities and local self-government bodies officials, representatives of academia, media and other interested professionals;

ü  Supporting customers (public sector, business community and civil society) by using Hot Line;

ü  Providing consulting and expert services and recommendations to the CA in the range of its competence;

ü  Maintaining registry of abusive participants of public procurement (“black list” and “white list”);

ü  Revealing the cases of artificial separation (brake down) of public procurement and relevant actions;

ü  Accomplishing other functions as defined by Georgian legislation.

AA/DCFTA related actions:

The DCFTA Agreement considers the approximation requirements of the Georgian public procurement legislation to the relevant EU acquis, in particular approximation with four main directives concerning to:

v  The Procedure of coordination of revealing the winner for signing on to the public service contract, providing work and delivery of goods.

v  The coordination of procurement procedures made by organizations working in the field of water, energy, transportation and postal service sectors;

v  The coordination of administrative procedures related to regulatory activities related to delivery of goods and the management of disputes concerning to public contracts.

v  The coordination of the administrative processes of regulatory activities, regarding to use the EU rules on procurement concerning the water, energy, transport and telecommunications sectors.

The Roadmap and Action Plan for implementation of PP Chapter of the EU-Georgia Association Agreement[1] was drafted, agreed and adopted, which describes the planned gradual approximation process of the Georgian Public Procurement legislation to the EU public procurement directives. The efficient implementation view of this process, including activities to strengthen institutional capacities and improvement of the capacities of the PP landscape stakeholders, is presented through the eight-year period ranging from 2014 to 2022.