Romania’s Court of Auditors controlled 2,600-2,700 public institutions last year and found 23,500 violations in spending public funds, and total damages of EUR 400 million.

Of this amount, some EUR 40 million represents losses related to public procurement, reports local News.ro.

Romania has 15,000 public contracting authorities, but the Court of Auditors manages to verify about 2,600-2,700 public institutions every year, said Cristina Breden, Director of Procurement at the Court of Auditors.

The Court of Auditors found over 2,300 irregularities in public procurement last year. Some 93% of the irregularities occur in the execution stage, after the attribution, and only 7% of them are in the planning stage, Breden explained.

Setting up a Centralized Procurement Unit would bring savings of EUR 2 billion, at a volume of EUR 18 billion worth of public procurement at country level, according to the Institute for Public Policy.

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