The ProZorro public procurement system that started operating on February 12, 2015, allowed saving around UAH 600 million of budget funds in a year of its operation, Head of Zakupki.prom.ua trading site, a participant of the ProZorro system, Mykola Zhandorov, has told Interfax-Ukraine.

He said that the total sum of tenders announced during one year was around UAH 9 billion and their number reached 50,000.

"In 2016, when the law on public procurement took effect, it is expected that all indicators would grow by at least ten times, as the law introduces mandatory online public procurement," Zhandorov said.

He said that during the year of the operation of the ProZorro system Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Odesa and Lviv regions were most active ones. Donetsk region is sixth.

Today, around 3,000 public customers work in the ProZorro system. The top largest are Defense Ministry, public joint-stock company Ukrgazvydobuvannia and Interior Ministry.

The largest tender was worth almost UAH 201 million when Ukrgazvydobuvannia bought steel pipies and steel sections.

Zhandorov said that the huge inefficient of processes and specialists in the public agencies hinder successful work of the public procurement system along with corruption.

"The absence of skilled buyers does large harm. The team of the Economic Development and Trade Ministry and representatives of the trading sites of the ProZorro system trained specialists of public agencies for the whole year, and it will continue in 2016," he said.

He said that soon typical specifications for announcing tenders will be created, the technical part of the system will be elaborated, quality criteria for selecting winners will be added and a possibility of challenging the results of tenders online will be created.