The National Anti-Corruption Commission warned government departments and agencies against violating the regulations of the national strategy to protect honesty and combat corruption. The commission urged all concerned agencies to abide by the regulations.

Speaking to the Saudi Press Agency, a commission source said following up the implementation of the strategy is within the jurisdiction of the commission.

“However, during field inspections the commission noticed that some government agencies were not complying with implementation of articles 150 and 151 of the executive bylaw for government tenders and purchase deals. Under the bylaw, the names of companies and firms submitting tenders in public bidding as well as the names of qualified bidders should be made public,” the source said, adding this would be applicable only to deals worth more than SR100,000.

The articles stipulate the names and details of companies and projects will be placed on the notice boards at the headquarters of concerned government departments and agencies as well as on their websites.

According to the source, violation of these two articles is against the transparency principles contained in the strategy that call for publicizing purchase deals made by the government and public organizations as well as joint stock companies, and allowing civil organizations and media as well as the public to have access to them in order to evaluate them.

Article 150 of the bylaw says details of deals and qualified bidding shall be publicized at least for 15 days after announcements are made about them. Information such as names, addresses and activities of the company, value of the deals, in addition to names of the awarded projects, their purposes and site of implementation shall be mentioned on the notices. Article 151 stipulates that the concerned government agency shall provide details of an individual every 60 days or less.

The information must include details such as type of contract and awarded projects, name and address of the agency that awarded the contract and address of the person with whom to contact in order to find out details of the contract, the site where the project is being implemented, date of its signing and total value of the contract, name, address and field of activity of the company that won the contract, and details of the contract.

An electronic copy of the advertisement published in local dailies and electronic sites should be supplied to the general secretariat of the Council of Saudi Chambers. These conditions are not applicable to the procurement of arms, military hardware and purchases related to national security and defense, the source added.