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Procurement irregularities worth more than 8.1 billion soums have been identified across six regions of Uzbekistan following inspections and complaint reviews by the Competition Promotion and Consumer Protection Committee, with cases initiated, fines levied and at least one tender cancelled outright.
The enforcement sweep — spanning Andijan, Bukhara, Jizzakh, Namangan, Navoi and Kashkadarya regions — exposed a recurring pattern: evaluation criteria ignored or manipulated, affiliated companies competing against each other in the same tender, and procurement documents that restricted rather than encouraged competition.
Rigged Scores and Affiliated Bidders
The largest single cluster of violations emerged in Bukhara Region, where the regional department found that decisions on 20 lots worth 4.6 billion soums in a tender organised by the Romitan District Medical Association had been made without observing evaluation criteria, and that participants had been awarded inappropriate scores. A case was initiated against the association under Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 225, and a binding instruction was issued.
In Kashkadarya Region, the Guzar District Landscaping Department’s 1.1-billion-soum procurement of road-grading machinery drew similar findings: evaluation criteria had not been established at all, and submitted documents were given unjustifiably low scores. An administrative penalty was imposed on the responsible official.
Affiliation between competing bidders — a direct breach of public procurement law — was the central finding in Namangan Region. A complaint submitted through social media prompted a review of a 350-million-soum banner-products procurement by the Namangan Olympic and Paralympic Sports Training Center. Investigators found that two participating companies, “ART AGENCY CENTER” LLC and “PIXEL BRANDWAVE” LLC, shared identical legal and factual addresses, meeting the definition of affiliated persons under Paragraph 13 of Article 23 of the Law “On Public Procurement.” The customer subsequently cancelled the procurement, preventing the violation from producing a contract.
A similar affiliation problem surfaced in Andijan Region, where a review of a 30-million-soum solar-panel installation tender organised by Paxtaobod District Children’s Music and Art School No. 25 identified the participation of interested or affiliated persons. Both financial and administrative penalties were applied.
Competition Restricted, Procedures Bypassed
In Jizzakh Region, continuous monitoring of procurement compliance uncovered violations of Article 29 of the Law “On Competition” in a 1.09-billion-soum tender for master-plan development organised by the Unified Customer Service Engineering Company under the Jizzakh Regional Hokimiyat. Statutory procedures were not observed. Cases were initiated, instructions issued to eliminate the violations, and administrative reports filed against responsible officials.
Navoi Region produced the most procedurally complex case: a 950-million-soum tender for a Class “V” ambulance organised by the Navoi Regional Branch of the Republican Emergency Medical Center was found to contain inconsistencies between tender documents and protocols, incomplete evaluation of participants, and requirements that restricted competition — again in breach of Article 29 of the Law “On Competition.” A binding instruction was issued to the branch, and an administrative report against responsible officials was forwarded to the judicial authorities, the most serious escalation in the current round of enforcement.
The Committee said it would continue systematic monitoring of public procurement to ensure rule of law and a transparent, competitive market environment.