December 11, 2017, 14:32 / Economics

FAS found a comma in the Ministry of Defense tender that was interfering with procurement

The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) stopped a violation in the purchase of musical instruments for the Ministry of Defense, according to the FAS website.

Elitstroy-Prestige LLC filed a complaint about the purchase of the Ministry of Defense, as follows from the message. The Antimonopoly Service discovered contradictory and biased requirements in the tender documentation with a maximum (initial) contract price of 59 million rubles.

In particular, according to the documentation, the weight of a four-valve professional baritone Bb should not exceed 2.60 kg. But according to the instructions, if the values of certain indicators are separated by a comma, the procurement participant must indicate in the application one of these values (i.e., either 2 kg or 60 kg), while to separate the whole part of the decimal fraction from the numerator of the fraction part, not a comma, but a period is used, the message notes.

Similar violations have been identified in the requirements for other goods, the FAS notes.

“An ambiguous interpretation of the same symbols and indicators does not allow procurement participants to determine the customer’s needs, complicates the formation of applications and, as a result, reduces the number of potential auction participants,” says Rachik Petrosyan, deputy head of the FAS, in a commentary.