Zornitsa Slavova, Institute for Market Economics
Public procurements are one of the most effective ways to spend budgetary means because they involve economical and effective execution of tasks of the administration in the conditions of competition and transparency.
In Bulgaria, however, public procurements are often associated with corruption scandals, patronage, opacity, squandering of public funds and poor implementation.
The initiative of the authorities for more transparency in managing and opening of different bulk data in the past few years has reached public procurements as well. Information about the public procurements, listed in the Register of public procurements from 01.01.2007 to 31.12.2015, was published on the Open data portal.
The open data about all public procurements in the period 2007 – 2015 gives the opportunity to separate public resources into different sections.
The data dissection shows a number of interesting facts:
- In the 2007 – 2015 period the authorities in Bulgaria have spent over BGN 62 billion in more than 170 000 procedures on the Public Procurement Act;
- The state makes a daily average of 60 public procurements and spends BGN 20 million public resources;
- Over the past few years the expenses for public procurements are stable and around 8-9% of the GDP and over 20% of public expenses;
- There aren’t significant differences in the expenses for public procurements between the last six governments in the period 2007 - 2015;
- The most expensive public procurements occur in 2009 and 2013 and coincide with the elections for the 41st and 42nd National Assembly;
- The number of public procurements for deliveries is the biggest, but the largest procurements are in the field of construction and over half of them include European co-financing;
- The analysis of public procurements statistics shows great concentration of contracts in a small number of executors (10% of executors win 71% of procurements worth 85% of the amount of all contracts for the observed period) and the same goes for the contracting entities (10% of them assign 73% of procurements worth 90% of the amount of all contracts for the observed period);
- Among the companies, who have won the biggest and most expensive public procurements are a few companies for medicinal products and medical devices delivery;
- The most expensive procurements are for infrastructural and transport projects;
- Among the contracting entities are also all 265 Bulgarian municipalities and their public procurements are ¼ of the number and amount of all procurements in the country.
