E-auctions to make government procurements transparent

Last week the Government of Moscow staged the first four electronic auctions to buy goods and services for the city's needs. Three of the auctions took place in the electronic trading system SETonline and the fourth on the platform of the company Intertech. SETonline general director Anton Emelyanov told Business that electronic auctions are much cheaper than the conventional ones, costing only 400 US dollars instead of 2,400. Meanwhile, lot prices can go down by as much as 15 to 30 percent. Yet at the last week's auctions prices came down by no more than 11 percent in the face of the small number of suppliers participating in the first round of auctions.