The government of Ukraine has changed the rules for holding auctions and temporarily canceled auctions in the ProZorro e-procurement system, since not everyone can participate in them due to constant shelling of energy infrastructure facilities.

As the press service of the Ministry of Economy reported on Tuesday, the Cabinet of Ministers adopted relevant resolution No. 1495 on December 30, 2022, it entered into force on January 3, 2023.

"As a response to the blackouts, we have temporarily canceled electronic auctions. From today, all auctions that will be announced in ProZorro will be held without an auction. That is, the participant's tender offer is final, and the winner is the one who gave the lowest price at the time of submitting the offer," First Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Economy Yulia Svyrydenko said.

According to her, in the conditions of power outage and the absence of the Internet, not all participants had the opportunity to bargain in the auction, and equal access is a key principle of public procurement.

Svyrydenko said that the government will return to trading when the situation with electricity supply stabilizes.

In addition, the resolution canceled local content for purchases for the needs of the Armed Forces, that is, pickups, trucks, ambulances, etc. can now be bought for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine without taking into account local content requirements, the ministry said.

According to the new rules, the customer, the appeal body and the State Audit Service have access in the electronic procurement system to information determined by the participant in the procurement procedure as confidential, and customers are given the right not to disclose information about their location in the annual plan for security reasons.

The Ministry of Economy said that the rules for holding auctions have been changed for the duration of martial law in Ukraine and within 90 days from the date of its termination or cancellation of changes in the rules.

Since the introduction of the martial law, 94,000 tenders for UAH 120 billion have been held in the ProZorro system, more than 23,000 enterprises have become participants in competitive purchases. In total, more than 2 million concluded contracts worth UAH 311 billion were reported in the electronic system.