The 21st Economic Forum is being held in Toruń at the moment. The two days’ event is attended by representatives of the world of business, science, politics and public administration. The motto of this year’s meeting is ”Integration and cooperation”.
On the first day, the meeting participants discussed opportunities and challenges of the Polish economy. The Forum was divided into thematic blocks devoted to economy, banking and finance, power industry as well as infrastructure and communication.
NIK President Krzysztof Kwiatkowski as one of the Forum speakers talked about the role of the Supreme Audit Office in supervising public institutions. By looking into public spending NIK verifies finance management, efficacy of tenders, as well as their reliability and legality. Procurements run by the general government sector are regularly audited by NIK. This area is not free from pathologies or illegal practices. During the Forum, the President of NIK mentioned the most frequent breaches detected by NIK inspectors in the public procurement area: overusing single-source procurement procedures, dividing procurements in parts, improper estimation of prices, considering the price as the only decisive criterion. The Head of NIK emphasised, though, that public procurement procedures in the public administration are more and more efficient. Krzysztof Kwiatkowski mentioned good practices observed by inspectors: establishing specialised units in the public administration sector dedicated to the preparation of the entire procurement process and aggregation of contracts to negotiate a good price. NIK President also raised the issue of public-private partnership and the role of these undertakings for the economic development. NIK audit showed that the key reason why the PPP formula was used in pursuing public objectives was the absence of other financing sources. At the same time, too little attention was paid to other advantages related to that partnership, such as faster and cheaper process of building facilities by the private partner, better quality of management and more effective exploitation of investments covered by the partnership.
The 21st edition of the Economic Forum was held under the honorary patronage of the Minister of Economy.
