The 20 million EUR tender that is expected to end by June 2013, has been
considered illegal and suspicious by the former Legal Director of the
Albanian Radio Television, Dorian Matlija.
The Public Procurement law obliges every subject to be transparent with public tenders, which should have been made by AMA and the Council of the Albanian Television.
“If the tender was made in a normal way, by a project of the public radio and television, then the tender would have been open. And if this would fail, we would pass to the procedure with negotiation. On this specific case, this negotiation procedure has overlooked some necessary steps and the law obliges the contractual authorities. The procedure has another problem that is related with the announcements. It is about a very large value which should have been published not only on the Ministry of Innovation website, but also on that of the Public Procurement agency and on a newspaper that distributes copies in Europe”, Matlija declared.
But besides this stalemate, another problem is the way how the project is financed, which is still incomplete. Legal expert Matlija says that the money for this tender should come from the state budget, not from loans. Meanwhile, the project is not complete even because MITIK is trying to make a tender with the mediator.
“As regards the tender, it can fail if it has been held wrong, even because there is the problem of sanctions”, Matlija says.
But why is this tender so rushed? Why the requests of the private operators, who operate in this market for more than 10 years, were completely left behind by living another expensive bill to the Albanian taxpayers, who pay the public television tax each year?
Pollo reacts: Tender, not a competence of AMA
After the news on Top Channel, the Minister for Innovation, Technology and Information, Genc Pollo, declared on a press release that the tender is not a competence of AMA.
Pollo explains that the Albanian public television has officially declared that they cannot organize this tender for several technical reasons, and they asked the government to use international experts for such an important tender.
Pollo also says that the public television council agrees with the tender documents prepared by the contractual authorities.
In this press release, the Minister reiterates that passing from analogue to digital broadcasts is a competence of the Albanian government, since the frequencies are a national asset that are administered by the Albanian government.
According to Pollo, this is an open international tender, a procedure that supports the law for public procurements, and that there are many renowned companies and banks that have shown interest for two years and to be part of this project.
Top Channel
