With the support of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the National Anti-Corruption Centre (NAC), the risks of corruption in national public procurement system were assessed. Evaluation was conducted with the support of experts contracted under the project "Strengthening the corruption prevention and analysis functions of the National Anticorruption Center (NAC)", implemented by UNDP with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway.

The study was based on the OECD Methodology for assessment of national procurement systems. The report includes, mapping of integrity risk areas and recommended measures for integrity/corruption risks mitigation.

The report identified several weaknesses of the legal and institutional framework in the field. Among them, there are: lack of the control mechanisms to detect corruption, in particular ex-post control of contract execution; the weak technical capacities of the members of the working groups in the contracting authorities, especially at local level, and the frequent cases of conflict of interest of their members; and an ineffective complaints and weak law enforcement system.

To address the identified issues, the experts used international experience from EU and World Bank has been used and adapted to the circumstance in the Republic of Moldova.

An innovative aspect for this sector, developed within the project, is the system of indicators of fraud and corruption throughout the entire scope of the procurement process, called “Red Flags” indicators. This is a support system of indicators warning about the possible illegalities for both contracting authorities and those responsible for supervision and control/external audit in this area.

In order to make this red flag indicator system operational, techniques for data collection and analysis are presented at the end of the Report, and provide replies to the question of how red flags should be identified and by which institutional procedures.