Hello! We have prepared a brief introduction into the government procurement process for individuals.. Let's see what it takes to get involved in public procurements and how to quickly find suitable tenders.

What is a public procurement?

These are e-auctions that are conducted under 44-FZ, the Federal Law on the Procurement Contract System. Customers state institutions, e.g. kindergartens, schools, universities, hospitals, municipalities, theaters, museums, academies of sciences, etc. They purchase products and services in accordance with special government regulations. The goal is to eliminate inappropriate budget spending and make the performer selection procedure as transparent and unbiased as possible.

A wide range of organizations is eligible for participation in public tenders which is beneficial for the state as this ensures competition among suppliers and ability to choose the best offer.

Natural persons can bid under 44-FZ

Article 3, paragraph 4 of the law reads:

Procurement Participant means any legal entity <...> or any natural person, including one registered as a sole proprietor.

The Federal Law No. 44-FZ from April 5, 2013

It means establishing a sole propriety entity is not mandatory for participation. The contractor can do this later, when he has gained experience in bidding and started getting profit from it.

Natural persons have the same rights

It does not matter to the customer whether the contract will be performed by a registered legal entity, an sole proprietor or just an individual. Price and the quality are the two things that matter. However, tax laws should be taken into account: if the contract is performed by an individual, the customer will have to pay contributions to the funds. The contractor himself will receive 13% less payment since the customer will retain the personal income tax.

Natural persons supply goods and services: they organize events, create websites, sell their or third-party real estate.

Take a look at the collection of recent tenders won by regular individuals:

How to find suitable tenders?

Seldon.Pro has information on all procurements conducted under 44-FZ and published in the Unified Information System. The selection is vast - there are tens of thousands of open tenders that you can search in using filters.

1. Enter a keyword in the search box depending on what product or service you are offering: property, website, repairs, etc. The system will show the suitable tenders in a matter of seconds regardless of how many search results there are.

2. Specify the procurement type - 44-FZ. This way you will filter the 223-FZ, 615-PP and commercial tenders.

3. Set the desired price range, for instance, under 3 million rubles. Specifying the upper limit, take into account your own capital as, in majority of cases, the payment is made after the contract has been performed, therefore, in case of delivering products, you will have to purchase them using your own money.

4. Select the region of the customer. We would advise to specify your region and, if the logistics suits you, the neighboring ones.

5. Tender method is open e-auction and quotations request. This option is set in the advanced search. There are other filters which we will tell you about later.

Done! The redundant procurements have been removed from the search results.

What is required for participation?

To apply for participation in an e-auction, you will have to create an e-signature and sign up on the Public Services Portal and zakupki.gov.ru.

Starting from January 1, 2019, quotation requests are also carried out online with rare exceptions. This means that one needs an e-signature for them as well.

Quotations request requires cash security for contract performance. E-auctions do not require bid security for contracts with price under 1 million rubles, but contract performance security is mandatory and must be at least 5% of the initial contract price.

Additional requirements for suppliers

There are certain limitations for natural persons expressed in additional requirements that can be filled by sole proprietors or LLC only. Such requirements are set by the customer and specified in the procurement documentation.

1. Some tenders are targeted at small and medium-sized businesses. Natural persons are not considered as SMEs, thus any bids submitted by them will be rejected.
2. If a tender falls under a licensable type of activity, you will not be able to apply for it either as only sole proprietors and legal entities have licenses.
3. Admission of self-regulatory organizations (SRO) means natural persons cannot participate in a tender.

There may be other restrictions for contractors. It is advised to thoroughly study the documentation to ensure efficient participation in public procurements.

Easy document management

Working with tender documentation in Seldon.Pro is really easy.

After finding the suitable tender, you have to study the customer's requirements. To do this you simply have to download the documents attached to a tender, separately or inside one zip file.

You don’t even have to go to the tender profile to study the analytics and customer details. You can do that later.