Procurement

Athens's defense procurement plans have been met with raised eyebrows and complaints in certain European capitals. Beyond the competition that has always existed between France and Germany in this field, Greece is being accused of spending European taxpayers' money on a shopping spree.

The Government approved a memorandum on Thursday mandating state-owned enterprises to participate in public auctions.

"It is a memorandum that increases (...) competitiveness of the majority or wholly state-owned companies through public procurement procedures," said Finance Minister Eugen Teodorovici at a news conference at Victoria Palace.

Bucharest City Hall (PMB) can grant works to its own firms without tenders, they must however ground them very well and the level of corresponding costs must be similar to the market prices, representatives of the Competition Council told AGERPRES.

Philippine senators began a public inquiry on Feb. 19 into the $300 million purchase of two navy frigates, to determine whether President Rodrigo Duterte’s closest aide had interfered in the procurement process.

Counting mosquitoes on the Danube River is more expensive than ever - public procurement to develop a geographic system for insect monitoring has expanded to nearly 1.5 million leva.

According to local authorities, the mosquito counting system was not just for mosquito counting but for their registration. It would not cost 1 million leva but 1 million and 425 thousand leva.

There will be competition this year to find a punchy way to sum up this transitional, and potentially transformative, year for Greece. "Clean exit" is one of the terms that has been thrown about a lot recently, while even the "Grecovery" mantra of 2014 has been repeated in the past few months by those expecting to reap the benefits of Greece completing its third bailout this summer.

Greek manufacturing activity kept expanding in December as new orders grew at the fastest pace in over nine years, leading firms to increase hiring and production, a survey showed on Tuesday.

Employment in Greek manufacturing grew at the highest rate seen in the last 18 months in November, according to the latest report on Markit's Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) issued on Friday.

Manufacturing companies were hiring as a result of new orders posting the biggest rise since February 2014.

The rising course of the Economic Sentiment Index and the Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) came to a halt in October, readings showed on Wednesday, in a sign of adjustment after the euphoria of the summer months and possibly due to the relative instability that continues to linger in the financial environment.

The intensive work of the Ministry of the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the European Union continues to ensure the logistics of the events that will take place in the first half of the year 2018 in Bulgaria. In this connection, a quarter of a million public procurement contract has been announced for the supply of computers and office equipment, reported BGNES.