The Future of Public Procurement: Efficiency, Technology, and Openness
From January 1, 2025, the Republic of Kazakhstan has a new Law
"On public procurement," signed by the Head of State on July 1, 2024. The document is aimed at increasing the efficiency of the procurement system, introducing modern digital solutions, ensuring transparency of procedures and minimizing corruption risks.
The implementation of the new law has significantly reduced the timing of procurement procedures. Thus, purchases using a rating-point system are carried out within five working days, and the terms for holding a regular tender are reduced from 60 to 10 calendar days.
These changes are already showing practical results. Since the beginning of the new law, by the end of 2025, contracts worth 8.1 trillion tenge have been concluded, which is 53% more than in the same period in 2024, when the volume of contracts concluded amounted to 5.3 trillion tenge.
Significant changes also affected the appeal mechanism. Now complaints are considered directly by the procurement organizer, which avoids unreasonable delay in procedures. At the same time, judicial appeal of the procurement results does not suspend the procurement process.
The measures taken contributed to a 21% decrease in the number of complaints compared to last year.
A turnkey project implementation mechanism has also been introduced, which provides for one contractor to carry out a full cycle of work - from design to construction and commissioning of the facility. This approach increases the responsibility of contractors and the efficiency of the implementation of construction projects. The list of objects for the application of this mechanism is approved by the corresponding maslikhats.
To strengthen public control, a mechanism for public monitoring of public procurement has been introduced.
In addition, on the basis of the Unified Public Procurement Operator - Center for Electronic Finance JSC - a Unified Procurement Platform has been created, combining existing procurement systems through integration with public procurement portals, purchases of the Samruk-Kazyna Foundation and other electronic platforms.
In turn, given that in recent years artificial intelligence has become one of the key areas of digital transformation of public administration in many countries of the world, the public procurement system requires appropriate transformation.
At the same time, it should be noted that today the cycle of public procurement - from planning to payment - is carried out entirely in electronic format through the web portal of public procurement, which ensures maximum transparency, openness and traceability of all procedures. So, according to the review of the international economic organization - the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the public procurement system of the Republic of Kazakhstan is one of the developed procurement systems in the world.
Also, one of the main directions of development of the public procurement system is the exclusion of the human factor, the development of non-price criteria for choosing a supplier and the automatic determination of the winner. So, when conducting public procurement in the field of construction using a tender method using a rating-point system, the winner is determined automatically based on data from state information systems, including supplier experience, tax discipline, territorial affiliation, negative indicators and other objective criteria.
The automated mechanism excludes the participation of the competition committee in the process of choosing the winner, which ensures the objectivity of the decisions made and significantly reduces the influence of the human factor. Due to the fact that the winner is determined automatically by the information system, the results of such purchases are not subject to appeal.
The Ministry of Finance will continue to work to further improve the public procurement system. Among the priority areas:
• digitalization of procurement using artificial intelligence technologies and further exclusion of the human factor in determining the winners;
• expansion of the use of rating-point system, including other types of work;
• full transition to the Unified Procurement Platform and unification of procurement systems of state bodies, Samruk-Kazyna Foundation and national companies;
• further support for domestic producers by expanding the list of goods withdrawn from the national regime.
Improving legislation and introducing digital technologies form a modern public procurement system based on the principles of efficiency, transparency, openness and fair competition.