■ Qin Zhilong
As one of the ways of government procurement, competitive negotiation has many advantages, but it is not widely used in practice. Why? The author tries to analyze this.
In 2011, 80.7% of China’s government procurement projects were purchased by public bidding, much higher than other countries. For example, in 2011, the amount of public bidding projects in Germany accounted for about 43.7%, while that in Britain was only 19% and that in the United States was 8%. In 2020, the scale of government procurement in China will be 3,697.06 billion yuan. From the perspective of procurement methods, the scale of public bidding, invited bidding, competitive negotiation, competitive consultation, inquiry and single-source procurement will account for 79.3%, 1.1%, 3.2%, 7.7%, 1.1% and 4.3% of the national government procurement scale respectively.
As can be seen from the above data, the amount of public bidding projects in China accounts for about 80%, while the amount of competitive negotiation projects accounts for only 3.2%. In contrast, there is a big gap between the two. The author believes that this is related to the different interests of the parties involved in government procurement.
The main reasons why purchasers seldom choose competitive negotiation methods are as follows: First, the publicity of government procurement system is not enough. As a result, buyers are unfamiliar with and do not understand the government procurement system. When it comes to government procurement, they think that public bidding should be held. I don’t know that there are many other procurement methods to choose from. What buyers don’t understand even more is that various procurement methods are just to adapt to different procurement contents, procurement projects and procurement scales. Second, the principle of fairness stipulated in the government procurement law is misunderstood, and it is considered that only public bidding is fair and other procurement methods are unfair. Sometimes, the regulatory authorities also hold this view. Some representatives of purchasers complained and told auditors that when auditing procurement projects, they often asked why public bidding was not used for procurement. Third, it misreads the stipulation in Article 26 of the Government Procurement Law that "public bidding should be the main procurement method of government procurement". It is believed that since the law clearly stipulates that it should be implemented, and public bidding is not limited by applicable circumstances, other procurement methods are limited by applicable circumstances. Therefore, public bidding has naturally become the first choice for purchasers. Of course, it is also one of the reasons that the bidding law was promulgated earlier than the government procurement law.
From the agency’s point of view, there are reasons why the internal control system of the agency is not perfect, and it is difficult for the agency to manage the procurement managers, fearing that the irregular operation of the managers will lead to criticism from the regulatory authorities or cause unnecessary doubts and complaints; There are reasons for the lack of professional ability of the managers themselves, because each manager has a lot of items to purchase, so it is difficult to be professional, especially the frequent rotation of managers makes it difficult to improve the professional level, which makes it difficult to accurately grasp the procedures and progress in the negotiation process and lose the advantage of competitive negotiation and procurement; There are also reasons for the negotiation experience of the handling personnel and insufficient understanding of the market situation, and they lack confidence in grasping the negotiation process and giving full play to the advantages of competitive negotiation.
Evaluation experts are reluctant to participate in the evaluation of competitive negotiation projects, because the negotiation time is long, and they are particularly worried that one round of negotiations will not be completed and many rounds of negotiations will take a lot of time. The evaluation of public bidding projects is relatively simple, and there is no need to face the suppliers. Even if you are not familiar with the majors involved in the procurement projects, you can score according to the routine requirements and complete the bid evaluation. In other words, it is easier for evaluation experts to fill in the blanks in public bidding projects. Of course, the professional ability of experts is also one of the constraints. Although the expert database has divided the specialties of experts, the technology of the project is becoming more and more complex, and the technical complexity is the main application situation of competitive negotiation procurement. It is difficult for randomly selected experts to meet the professional characteristics of the project, because the expert database is divided according to the major categories, and it is impossible to divide it too finely.
For suppliers, competitive negotiation projects are also difficult to deal with. Competitive negotiation is generally conducted on site, but many public bidding projects are basically electronic at present, and almost no links require suppliers to go to the site unless some projects require suppliers to respond on site. In addition, competitive negotiation projects are difficult to control in time, and professionals who know the project best need to come to the site to participate in the negotiations. Unlike public bidding, suppliers can make overall arrangements for the personnel who make bidding documents. In other words, for competitive negotiation projects, suppliers cannot fish in troubled waters. Under normal circumstances, it is easy for the negotiating team to judge whether a supplier really understands the project, especially the technical key points and difficulties of the project. In practice, it is also common for the negotiating team to meet supplier representatives who have "three questions and three unknowns". In fact, it is easier to judge the professional ability and comprehensive strength of suppliers through negotiation, find the suppliers who are really suitable for completing the project, and reduce the procurement risk. A well-written bidding document does not truly represent the ability and level of suppliers, and only written materials sometimes lead to misjudgment.
The author believes that competitive negotiation has at least the following advantages: it can shorten the procurement cycle, improve procurement efficiency and make procurement projects play a role faster; Can improve work efficiency and reduce procurement costs; Can conduct more flexible negotiations and reduce procurement risks; It can be handled flexibly according to the actual situation, which is more convenient for the realization of procurement objectives; It can reduce the risk of being manipulated and is more conducive to achieving the value goal of "value for money".
The biggest disadvantage of competitive negotiation is that the requirements for procurement personnel are relatively high, and they need to know more about the project information and market conditions, and they need to master certain negotiation skills and experience.
The author writes this article in the hope of increasing the application of competitive negotiation procurement through the efforts of all parties involved in government procurement. In addition to competitive negotiation, there are competitive negotiation, inquiry, single source and other procurement methods, but competitive negotiation is a non-bidding procurement method with many advantages, which is worth applying if the situation is suitable.
As early as the 2013 National Government Procurement Work Conference, relevant leaders pointed out: "On the one hand, we emphasize public bidding, and the legal time for public bidding takes more than 40 days at the earliest, and the problem of low procurement efficiency has been criticized by the society; On the other hand, many procurement results have not achieved the goal of’ value for money’, and many open tenders have been manipulated. This effect of sacrificing efficiency and not really achieving standardization is seriously incompatible with the efficiency requirements of government administrative system reform. " It is in line with the direction of deepening the reform of government procurement system in China to rationally apply various procurement methods and change the old concept that public bidding is the king.
(Author: Shanghai Municipal Government Procurement Center)
