“The modular e-procurement system developed by BUCE is well on par with that in South Korea, which is by far the best one in the world”. This statement came from Eliza Niewiadomska, EBRD Public Procurement Senior Counsel, during the fact-finding mission to BUCE headquarters in Minsk. She also noted that given the flexible architecture and all-in-one nature of BUCE’s technologies, they could be used as a best practice example when implementing EBRD-initiated e-procurement projects in other countries.

During the talks, EBRD experts got familiar with BUCE’s core business activities and software solutions powering BUCE’s electronic trading platforms. The discussion focused on BUCE’s role in the public procurement system of the Republic of Belarus as well as distinctive features of BUCE’s e-procurement platform (www.zakupki.butb.by) which is one of the two electronic platforms employed by state-run organizations to buy goods, works, and services. More specifically, thanks to electronic document management introduced at BUCE, extensive use of EDI, and seamless cross-platform integration within its ecosystem, BUCE is able to offer fast, transparent, and efficient procurement services to both public and private sector companies. In addition, BUCE closely cooperates with the Ministry of Antitrust Regulation and Trade and the Treasury Department of the Finance Ministry, which includes regular electronic interchange of statistical information.

According to EBRD representatives, the fact that BUCE has converted most of the procurement procedures in the electronic format suggests that the Republic of Belarus follows the worldwide trends and takes consistent efforts in a bid to create a full-fledged digital economy. EBRD is therefore willing to provide its expertise and assistance with further improvement of Belarus’ public procurement system. This said, within the next couple of weeks, an EBRD taskforce is supposed to pay a visit to Minsk in order to conduct a thorough assessment of BUCE’s technologies and provide recommendations regarding their fine-tuning and optimization.