2.6 billion kuna savings from electronic public procurement, introduced on December 1

The establishment of a comprehensive electronic public procurement process can lead to savings exceeding 2.6 billion kuna, emphasized the Minister of Economy, Entrepreneurship and Crafts Darko Horvat at a Government session from which the proposal for the law on electronic invoicing in public procurement was sent to the Parliament.

The law on electronic invoicing in public procurement transposes the directive of the European Parliament into the legal order of the Republic of Croatia and introduces the obligation for all public procurement entities to receive electronic invoices in public procurement procedures starting from December 1, 2018, as well as the obligation to issue e-invoices in public procurement procedures from July 1, 2019.

Minister Horvat notes that the law represents one of the measures of the National Reform Program for 2018, and the main goal of the measure and the law is the complete issuance and receipt of e-invoices in public procurement.

>>>The new Law on eInvoice in public procurement will create over 100,000 recipients of electronic invoices

As he states, in electronic invoicing procedures, the advantages for issuers of e-invoices include lower administrative costs for preparation, printing, and enveloping of invoices, elimination of postage costs, invoices are delivered in a much shorter time, and finally, they are stored in a secure and controlled electronic archive.

Additionally, the costs of processing e-invoices are significantly lower compared to the costs of processing paper invoices, and as the minister emphasizes, additional, significantly greater savings are achieved by digitizing the business process from procurement to delivery, shorter processing times for invoices, and accelerated payments.

“By establishing a comprehensive electronic public procurement process, maximum effects and savings can be achieved, which according to our estimates can be from six to 13 percent of the total amount of public procurement, and this represents savings greater than 2.6 billion kuna for the Republic of Croatia,” emphasized Horvat.

>>>Two billion kuna savings in public procurement thanks to eInvoices

He notes that to enable the exchange of e-invoices at the state and local levels, it is necessary to ensure transport infrastructure in the form of a central platform for communication and interconnection of information intermediaries and the exchange of e-invoices.

The platform will enable communication and interconnection between public and sectoral contracting authorities and suppliers, which represents almost more than 12.5 million connections during the exchange of e-invoices.

Horvat reminds that by the law on state information infrastructure and the regulation on organizational and technical standards, the Financial Agency (Fina) is defined as one of the central service providers for connecting to the state information infrastructure, and this draft law expands its role as an information intermediary for receiving and sending electronic invoices.