Comparison of the Rules and Principles for Organising Tenders in Russia and the Procurement Regimes of Kazakhstan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia

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Abstract

The study examines how far the rules and principles for organising tenders that apply in Russia under Federal Law No. 44-FZ of 5 April 2013 and Federal Law No. 223-FZ of 18 July 2011 are reproduced in the procurement regimes of Kazakhstan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia, and whether methods of procurement monitoring built on Russian data can be transferred to those four countries.

Data and method. The five regimes are compared on eight parameters: principles; procurement methods and electronic form; minimum bid submission periods; securities and anti-dumping measures; single-source procurement; requirements for participants and prohibitions in the tender documentation; the register of unscrupulous suppliers; and appeal. The sources are the texts of laws and secondary legislation in force in September 2026, the Protocol on the Procedure for Regulating Procurement (Annex 25 to the Treaty on the Eurasian Economic Union of 29 May 2014) as amended in 2023, and the reviews of the Eurasian Economic Commission for 2023 and 2024.

Principal findings. On six parameters out of eight the design of the rules is similar. The same main procurement methods are used everywhere and competitive procedures are conducted in electronic form; minimum bid submission periods are built in the same way, although Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have set some of them below the minimum provided for by the Protocol; bid security nowhere exceeds 5 per cent of the initial price and performance security 30 per cent; the register is kept on three grounds with a listing period of two years; immeasurable requirements and the specification of trademarks are prohibited everywhere. The procedure for considering complaints and for entry in the register differs substantially. In Russia and Belarus complaints are considered by the antimonopoly authority, which is independent of the contracting authority and empowered to issue binding orders. In Kazakhstan a complaint is considered by the contracting authority itself; in Kyrgyzstan the contracting authority considers it at first instance and an independent commission at second instance. In 2022 Armenia abandoned administrative appeal, and procurement disputes are heard by a court on payment of a state fee of up to 1 per cent of the procurement price.

Conclusions. The similarity of the procedural rules is sufficient for signs of restricted competition in the tender documentation to be detected in the same way in all five countries, so the CILC typology of mechanisms and the list of signs used in the monitoring register transfer without adaptation. It is not sufficient for transferring the confirmation rate, the share of procedures in which the supervisory authority found a violation, since in three countries out of four a violation is confirmed by a body of a different nature or by a court. The study formulates the working hypothesis that the Protocol, by unifying procedural rules in detail and leaving remedies rules to the discretion of the states, has reproduced on the scale of the Eurasian Economic Union the situation described in earlier CILC studies for Russia, in which the existence of an appeal instance does not guarantee that a complaint is considered on the merits.

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Recommended citation

Limarau, D. (2026). Comparison of the Rules and Principles for Organising Tenders in Russia and the Procurement Regimes of Kazakhstan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia. Report. Consejo Internacional para la Lucha contra la Corrupción. DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23142582. https://cilclegal.org/