Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense has completed its very first direct procurement deal through the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA), following years of painful efforts to obtain admittance to the alliance’s unified acquisition system.
“We congratulate (the ministry) with its independent entry to international, competitive markets!” Ukraine’s mission to NATO wrote on Twitter.
According to the defense media outlet Ukrainian Military Portal, the ministry purchased caterpillar tracks for infantry fighting vehicles BMP-1 and BMP-2, which are depicted in the Ukrainian NATO mission’s post on social media.
“The independent entry into global markets will pave the way to significant cost-cutting in procurement and to avoiding most of the corruption risks present when the defense department has to adhere to mediation services,” the website said.
The NSPA is a unified procurement platform meant “to provide effective and cost-efficient multinational solutions” to all 30 member countries and NATO partners “from weapon systems to fuel delivery, port services, airfield logistics, medical and catering services or base support services for troops stationed across the world,” according to the agency’s website.
Ukraine formally joined the NSPA partnership in 2016 as part of its policy of rapprochement with NATO and alliance-oriented defense and security reforms, including in the field of procurement, a source of endemic corruption in Ukraine.
Despite having access, Kyiv made its first trial entry to the platform only in early 2020.
“We intend to purchase (from the NSPA) those things that are not produced in Ukraine and that we can’t buy under intergovernmental agreements,” then-Defense Minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk said in his February interview with the Kyiv Post.
“That is anything we need to get rather quickly — some specialized hardware or equipment… We can make non-disclosed procurement deals, knowing that NSPA runs the procurement process in a proper way, including comparison studies. This is a very good instrument.”
Notably, the defense ministry was not supposed to seek NSPA arms deals for equipment that could be produced by Ukrainian manufacturers.
In February 2019 and August 2020, the country’s defense production giant UkrOboronProm reported its readiness to produce track belts for BMP infantry fighting vehicles.
Nonetheless, the Defense Ministry decided to procure the hardware from the NSPA rather than from UkrOboronProm in this case. According to the Ukrainian Military Portal, this could have happened because the NATO platform offered a lower contract price.
