This is provided for by the international public procurement competition announced by the municipal administration on July 2. Supplier proposals are expected by August 5.
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The contract would be concluded for one year with the possibility to extend it twice for 12 months each time, the maximum annual contract value – 376.7 thousand euros (including VAT). A contract concluded on the same principle was also extended twice with the current publicity provider, the company “Point media”.
According to the Central Public Procurement Information System, this three-year contract worth 900 thousand euros (including VAT) is valid until September 29.
With the new procurement, the municipality aims to purchase information printing in five publications: a national newspaper, its supplement for the Kaunas region, the Kaunas region newspaper, a culture and art magazine, and a national lifestyle magazine.
According to “Kas vyksta Kaune”, only one publication meets the requirements of at least two positions.
The supplement of the national newspaper for the Kaunas region is currently published only by “Lietuvos rytas”, and the Kaunas region newspaper is published at least three times a week with a circulation of at least 10,000 copies only by “Kauno diena”.
As announced by the municipality, under the current contract, last year “Point media” was paid 260 thousand euros from the municipal budget.
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According to the news portal, 54% of the contract went to “Diena Media News”, which publishes “Kauno diena”, 32% to “Lietuvos rytas”, 6% to the publisher of the magazine “IQ”, “Naujienų centras”, and the remaining 8% to the public relations agency itself.
Before announcing the new procurement, Kaunas municipality held a market consultation in June and received several dozen questions and proposals from market participants. According to “Kas vyksta Kaune”, the city accepted some technical proposals but rejected those related to competition, price weighting, and splitting the procurement.
The news portal noted that public sector entities must submit data on funds allocated to information creators and disseminators to the VIRSIS system, but by July 14, the Kaunas municipal administration had not submitted any data on such transactions.
The Ministry of Culture told the portal that failure to submit this data to VIRSIS may be considered an administrative offense. The ministry should supervise the declaration of funds allocated for publicity, but it admitted it does not have sufficient resources for this, although transparency in this area “is still not sufficient”.
According to the ministry, contracts of public relations agencies with final publications should also be declared in VIRSIS. The ministry stated that this provision should be clearly established in law.
As indicated by “Kas vyksta Kaune”, besides the currently valid contract and the planned new three-year publicity contract, in the first half of 2026, Kaunas municipality renewed annual publicity contracts with news portals for nearly 80 thousand euros (including VAT).
