The government is preparing major changes to the Public Procurement Act to ease the bureaucratic burden on local governments when drawing on EU funds. Minister for Inverstment Richard Raši said he wants to simplify application procedures, limit objections, and reduce checks on public procurement to one instance, as required by EU law.
At the moment, about 1.7 billion euros‘ worth of projects are published in the Slovakia Programme. Next year the plan is to announce calls for tenders amounting to roughly €6.3 billion. Of that, almost two billion euros will be allocated in a process where the regions and the cities will have the main say.
The government also wants to hand over land within town limits, currently under the Slovak Land Fund, to the municipalities. And government buildings that are standing empty will also be loaned for free to local governments, to turn into rental flat, schools or social service homes.
(TASR)
