Research On The Legal Issues Of Central Purchasing Bodies

Government procurement system is an important integral part of public financial management system, the effective implementation of the government procurement system plays an important role in saving financial fund, and maintaining national interests and public interests. Central purchasing is the main organizational form of the government procurement, and it’s not only an effective way to improve the efficiency of government procurement, but also the way to ensure that government procurement is conducted in a fair, open and impartial manner. As an important party to government procurement, central purchasing bodies are responsible for organizing central purchasing activities. The purpose of setting up the central purchasing bodies is to conduct government procurement, to save the financial fund and to improve the scale economies effect of government procurement. Therefore, the status of the central purchasing bodies in the government procurement system is self-evident.There are some provisions on the central purchasing bodies in Government Procurement Law of China and relevant regulations, but these provisions are not detailed and systemic enough, and some provisions are even conflicting. For example, the provisions regarding rights and obligations of central purchasing bodies are not clear enough, the rules about central purchasing bodies’business area are conflicting. Meanwhile, some problems have been found in practice, for instance, some central purchasing bodies are set up randomly, and centain members of the bodies breach their duties. In addition, the enforcement of the law is lax, and the supervision system is disorderly. All these lead to the situation that some central purchasing bodies cannot effectively perform their duties and achieve government procurement goals, there is no doubt that the interests of the procuring entities and suppliers’rights would be harmed. Based on these, it is necessary to further research central purchasing bodies such as their nature, rights, obligations, and legal responsibilities, to improve the relevant regulations on central purchasing bodies and enhance relevant system, so that central purchasing bodies are able to better conduct government procurement, on behalf the procuring entity, and achieve the purposes of government procurement.This paper provides an in-depth analysis on relevant legal issues related to central purchasing bodies by using methods of theoretical analysis, literature analysis and comparative analysis, and puts forward some suggestions to solve problems existed in legislation and practice. This paper includes four parts. The first part is an overview of central purchasing bodies, in which the parties to government procurement and the model of government procurement are briefly introduced, and the similarities and differences between central purchasing bodies and social procurement agencies are compared, and the theoretical basis of central purchasing bodies is analysed. In addition, the experience of legislation and practice in United States and Korea are also studied in this part. The emphases of this paper are the second, the third and the fourth parts. These three parts select three important legal issues on central purchasing bodies to study, concerning the establishment of central purchasing bodies and their nature, rights and obligations of central purchasing bodies, and their legal responsibilities. The second part first introduce the rules about settings up a central purchasing body and its legal nature contained in Government Procurement Law, then analyse the shortcomings of relevant regulations, next discuss problems found in practice, and finally give some suggestions for improvement. The third part focuses on discussing rights and obligations of central purchasing bodies, and the fourth part is about legal responsibilities of central purchasing bodies. The structure of these two parts are similar to the second one.In the second, the third, and the fourth parts, the author introduces the relevant regulations about central purchasing bodies, and analyses problems existed in legislation, including that the setting standards of central purchasing bodies are not clear enough, the rules about bodies’business area are conflicting, the source of agencies’rights is unclear, the rights of central purchasing bodies need to be futher defined, the avoidance system is imperfect, and legal responsibilities of central purchasing bodies are not clear and concrete enough, ect. Also, the author discuss problems found in practice, which includes that the central purchasing bodies set up at will, the nature of central purchasing bodies is chaotic, breach of duty are repeated, the law enforcement of regulatory department is lax and the supervision is ineffective. In the end, the author puts forward some suggestions for improvement with the aim to solve those problems in legislation and in practice. These suggestions include clearly providing the setting standards and business area of central purchasing bodies, accurately defining the nature and the affiliation of the bodies, clearly stipulating the rights and obligations, further regulating the behaviour of the members in central purchasing bodies, clearly providing the legal responsibilities, and strengthening the supervision and enforcement, ect.The innovation of this paper lies in systematical research on relevant legal issues related to central purchasing bodies. At present, most scholars are studying central purchasing bodies as one of government procurement parties or models of government procurement, few studies pay attention to a comprehensive research on legal issues related to the central purchasing bodies. Based on analysis of provisions on central purchasing bodies in relevant legislation, and considering the problems found in practice, the author provides an in-depth analysis of shortcomings in regulating central purchasing bodies in relevant regulations and in practice, and puts forward suggestions for improvement. These suggestions are also the main contribution of this paper. However, because the ability of the author is limited, there are certain inadequacies in the paper, for example, study of international experience is not sufficient and certain suggestions may be not mature enough.