A technical glitch in Kosovo’s new e-procurement system could be costly to municipal budgets. USAID recently introduced a simple fix to the municipal-level public procurement system that could save local governments thousands of dollars.  Democracy Plus, a civil society organization that is monitoring procurement activities in five municipalities in Kosovo, uncovered a potentially expensive technical glitch in the procurement system.   Tender documents issued on Excel budget templates included Excel formulas in certain cells that were unlocked and could be easily modified or deleted.

Democracy Plus discovered that bidders tended to adjust, change, or delete Excel formulas in the tender documents, and these bids often contained mathematical errors.  Contracting authorities are required by Kosovo law to reject a bid if mathematical errors exceed two percent of the total amount.  In some cases, the lowest-priced bidder was disqualified as a result of a simple mathematical error.  Consequently, municipalities were forced to select a more expensive bidder as the awardee.  For instance, in one case in Pristina, the difference between the lowest cost bidder and second bidder was more than €71,000.

With USAID support, Democracy Plus had the tools needed to monitor the e-procurement system and alert the municipalities to this issue. As a result, USAID’s Transparent, Effective and Accountable Municipalities activity then assisted the municipalities to introduce a system to protect formulas in Excel spreadsheets.  Now, bidders are not able to change formulas when calculating prices.  In this case, a small, technical fix resulted in big savings for municipalities.