Colombia Update: NEW PUBLIC PROCUREMENT RULES UNDER THE TRANSPARENCY LAW

By means of Law 2195 of 2022 —the Transparency Law— the Colombian Congress modified certain governmental procurement regulations. The most important changes are summarized below:

Every governmental entity contracting under a special procurement procedure, different than those governed under Law 80 of 1993, must publish the pre-contractual and contractual documents through the public procurement electronic platform —SECOP II—. The governmental entities have a 6-month term to implement such measures.

The standard bidding rules template (pliegos tipo) shall be mandatory for the procurement of construction activities, auditing, and designs for such activities — even when such activities are procured by governmental entities which procurement processes are governed under private law. In addition, any governmental entities expressly authorized not to follow standard bidding rules template —such as high education institutions, governmental social entities (empresas sociales del Estado), entities with public and private capital, and industrial and commercial governmental entities (solely in connection with their day-to-day procurement activities related to their corporate purpose) — must include in their procurement manuals the use of standard bidding rules as a recommended practice.

Contractors who have been sanctioned two or more times during the performance of an agreement related to the scholar feeding program will be barred from contracting with Colombian governmental entities for ten years.

In addition to any sanctions already set forth in the law related to foreign bribery conducts, any affiliate entity directly or indirectly controlled by an entity engaged in such conducts, will also be barred from participating in public procurement processes.

Also, bidders who during one year prior to any given procurement process are subject to sanctions or penalty clauses under a governmental contract will be sanctioned with a discount of 2% of the total possible score of the bidding process.

To review the full text of the Law 2195, please click here: 

By LLOREDA CAMACHO & CO, Colombia, a Transatlantic Law International Affiliated Firm.  

For further information or for any assistance please contact colombia@transatlanticlaw.com 

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