24.05.2024. Round table on “Food sales through the Electronic Catalog of Goods and Procurement at Prozorro Market e-tender: How to expand the market during the war. Main challenges and prospects offered by Prozorro Market”
On May 24, 2024, the Kyiv Chamber of Commerce and Industry initiated a roundtable discussion on “Food sales through the Electronic Catalog of Goods and Procurement at Prozorro Market e-tender: How to expand the market during the war. Main challenges and prospects offered by Prozorro Market”.
The relevance of this topic was confirmed by the appeal to the Kyiv Chamber of Commerce and Industry by business representatives who are suppliers of food products at the Prozorro Market e-tender. The roundtable was chaired by Mykola Zasulskyi, President of the Kyiv Chamber of Commerce and Industry, in the presence of Liudmyla Sizikova, First Vice President of the Kyiv Chamber of Commerce and Industry; Yevhen Yakubovsky, Director of the State Institution “Professional Procurement”; Mykola Tkachenko, Director General of the Prozorro State Enterprise; Yurii Mirkieiev, Deputy Head of the Food Safety and Veterinary Medicine Department, Head of the State Control Department of the Main Department of the State Service of Ukraine on Food Safety and Consumer Protection in Kyiv; Orest Stepaniak, the Head of the School Nutrition Reform Team, and 49 other participants. Among them were heads of education departments of the State Administration of 15 districts of Kyiv, directors of 12 leading companies supplying dairy food products to Prozorro Market, and one of the event’s initiators, Raisa Mykhailova, director of FAVOR LLC.
The roundtable was attended by Mariia Hulich, Doctor of Sciences (Medicine), Professor, the Head of the Laboratory of Nutrition Hygiene and Safety of Food Products at the State Institution “Marzieiev Institute for Public Health of the National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine”, who expressed her opinion on the “Impact of the new procurement rules on the quality of baby and school food products supplied.” She emphasized the importance of nutrition as one of the main elements of a child’s growth, development, and health. The issue of nutrition for school-age children deserves special attention. In Ukraine, on the initiative and under the patronage of the First Lady, school meals are being reformed to ensure healthy, high-quality, and safe nutrition for children. Mariia Hulich emphasized that the procurement of food for children through Prozorro Market based on a single procurement method – “request for quotations from suppliers” – is of great concern. This procurement is based solely on the price criterion for determining the winner, and the supplier with the cheapest product is automatically selected. Reducing the product’s price is usually achieved by replacing food ingredients with lower quality and cheaper ones and using food additives. Such actions lead to a decrease in the quality and nutritional value of products. It is exactly the kind of manipulation that unscrupulous producers do. Unfortunately, in the Prozorro Market procurement system, the qualification of suppliers is too simplified. There is also no provision for documentary evidence of food quality and safety. Such changes in procurement can lead to the procurement of low-quality food products without confirmation of their compliance with the requirements of technical regulations but with a low dumping price. In such circumstances, educational institutions are forced to buy food for school meals, including dairy products, at the lowest price, without quality confirmation, and receive goods of poor quality (or of unknown origin). As a result, there is a direct threat to the lives and health of children.
Mariia Hulich suggested that when procuring baby food through e-tender and Prozorro Market, we should develop a mechanism to use not price factors but, first of all, to take into account all the criteria for evaluating the manufacturer provided for by the Law “On Public Procurement,” as well as to add information about the quality of goods to product profiles and require relevant documents when adding goods to the e-catalog (declarations of compliance with the Technical Regulations, quality certificates/declarations, product testing reports, ISO certificates). Or go back to purchasing baby and school food in the Prozorro system.
This proposal received a lot of positive feedback from the roundtable participants, which was evident in the discussion and the letter of appreciation from the roundtable organizers.