Moscow announced a tender for the purchase of 29 tomographs for a total amount of more than 1.2 billion rubles. The price of the application for the supply of equipment, which last year found itself at the center of a number of high-profile corruption scandals due to the fact of inflating their cost, as the customer assures, is now even lower than the market price.

According to the competition documentation, the tomographs are intended to equip medical institutions of the Moscow Department of Health within the framework of the “Health Care Modernization Program for 2011–2012.”

The supplies require, in particular, 21 spiral multi-slice computed tomographs (total cost of the lot - 878.85 million rubles), as well as 8 magnetic resonance tomographs (396 million rubles). The competitive application provides not only for the supply and installation of equipment, but also for a one-year warranty on all components of the tomograph and the supplier’s work “aimed at maintaining and restoring the performance” of the equipment.

Last year, it was the supply of tomographs that was at the center of high-profile corruption scandals. In the summer of 2010, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced the need for severe punishment for everyone involved in the purchase of medical equipment for government needs at inflated prices. The President noted that systemic measures are needed, in particular, to monitor prices and identify authorized intermediaries who will initially understand how much they have the right to earn, “so that this bacchanalia does not happen in different regions, when they earn 200-300%.” In September, the Federal Antimonopoly Service reported 216 inspections of medical equipment purchases and identified 67 cases of violations. After this, law enforcement agencies in a number of regions announced the initiation of criminal cases on the facts of unlawful expenditure of funds in the purchase of tomographs at inflated prices, in particular in the Novgorod region, Karelia, Irkutsk region, Udmurtia, etc.

Probably, in order to avoid further suspicions of “non-market” prices, the provision “Market analysis of current prices based on price (commercial) offers of suppliers” has been added to the procurement documentation, based on which Moscow plans to purchase tomographs at a discount. The offers analyzed on the market range from 962.997 million rubles. up to 1.579 billion rubles. for the first lot, from 498.283 million rubles. up to 831.021 million rubles - according to the second. True, last fall, the investigative department of the investigative committee at the prosecutor’s office in the Samara region, during the investigation of the procurement scandal, still called the “market order” of prices: 16-slice tomographs were estimated at 16–20 million rubles. ( see “Kommersant” dated October 6, 2010 ).

Irina Parfentyeva

Tomographs were placed in the light