Belarus: A regulation for PPP procedure has been adopted for development of public-private partnership law.
The procedure for preparation, consideration and evaluation of offers of PPP projects, rules for the tender procedure for selection of private partners and the procedure for keeping a State Register of PPP agreements were approved by Resolution of the Council of Ministers no 532 of 6 July 2016 (“Resolution”).
Under the Resolution, preparation of offer is carried out in two stages: (i) preparation of project concept (ii) preparation of documentation.
Both public and private sectors can propose a PPP project. If the proposer is a private entity or person, they should prepare the project concept and deliver it to the interested authority (the authority which would be responsible for matters connected with the project). Then the concept is approved by other authorities indicated in the Resolution, by the National Agency for Investment and Privatization, and the Intergovernmental Infrastructure Coordination Council.
After approval of the concept by the state bodies concerned, the private sector drafts the documents: technical and economic substantiation, facility certificate, draft PPP agreement. Then the documents are approved by the same state bodies as the concept, and a decision is made on realization of the project.
After this decision a tender procedure for private partner selection is carried out. The tender offer and an extract from tender documents with the requirements for bidders are placed on the official website of the tender organizer and published in media sources. The tender organizer can be a state or local authority which is authorized to operate on behalf of the Republic of Belarus or administrative-territorial unit.
The procedure, place, timeframe, evaluation criteria and so on are indicated in the tender offer. The maximal timeframe for submitting bids is 30 working days. Evaluation criteria may be: timeframe, financial-economic criteria, technical-economic indexes, finance sources and amounts, sources for reimbursing expenses and profit sources of private partner, volume of goods (work, services). Besides, the tender offer must contain the tender security in the form of a deposit.
The new Regulation entered into force on 27 July 2016.
Source: National legal Internet portal of the Republic of Belarus (NLIP) 26.07.2016, 5/42369