Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine, Dmytro Klimenkov, shared details of procurement reforms carried out by the Ministry of Defense in accordance with NATO standards, which are aimed at combating corruption.
According to him, from now on, the Ministry of Defense will set maximum prices for food products purchased for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
"If earlier, according to NABU, suppliers fixed the price of potatoes at 16 hryvnias per kilogram, then in one of the tenders in December 2023, the Ministry of Defense set the maximum price of 10.35 hryvnias," he said.
According to him, before the introduction of the reforms carried out by the Ministry of Defense, suppliers set abnormally low prices for those goods that they did not intend to supply regularly, and charged high prices for products that they planned to supply daily and in large quantities.
“This led to the fact that the total price for the entire catalog remained low, which allowed them to win tenders. And it was because of this scheme that we saw eggs sold for 17 hryvnias,” emphasized Dmytro Klimenkov.
He also noted that the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine should set the rules, not directly engage in procurement.
“To do this, we created a Procurement Policy Department based on NATO standards. But we delegated the procurement functions themselves to two agencies. One agency deals with weapons procurement, and the other with logistics needs,” he noted.
“We cannot allow any room for corruption in defense procurement,” he added.
In January 2024, Dmytro Klimenkov identified cleaning the system from unscrupulous participants participating in public procurement as one of the priorities of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine team.
