More than half of public contracts in Spain (52.9%) do not justify the budget of the tender, that is to say, the price of output that the Administration puts to the works or services they wish to hire. This causes “deviations disproportionate” between the initial estimate and the amount finally awarded, the alert the first report of the Independent Office of Regulation and Supervision of the Procurement (Oirescon), recently created at the behest of Brussels. Also denounces the existence of irregularities in the 47% of the minor contracting, which is given directly, and avoids the competition.
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In the background, the document is identifying a “lack of planning” in public procurement. In Spain, sign some 120,000 contracts per year, without counting the minors. “Am surprised by the percentage that the complaint by the office to the extent that it is pointing to a lack of preparation on the design of the contract and the calculation of the costs,” says José María Gimeno Feliu, professor of Administrative Law at the University of Zaragoza. As she explains it, if it is the case that there are several bidders competing for the contract, the price will end all ways keeping. But if there is a competitive strain, the Administration will end up paying more.
The lengthy report, which spans more than 400 pages, describes the irregularities in the public Administrations incur when they hire third parties. To do analyzes on all 17 reports of the Court of Auditors and other regulatory autonomic. Among the most common is not to justify the contract award procedure used, which according to the supervisor occurs in 58.8% of the bids. Usually happens when using the negotiated procedure without advertising, by amount or by technical reasons or exclusive provider. But also in cases in which the Administration used to handling urgent or emergency without certifying that they give the necessary requirements to do so.
Another of the problems lies in the minor contracting. With figures of 2018 irregularities are detected in half of them. And that’s despite the fact that the legislation of 2017 was drafted to limit by preventing the use whenever you can anticipate the need. The contract minor is the one whose maximum amount reaches 15,000 euros for a year. Awarded directly between the three budgets that the public body has collected. That is to say, it lacks a tendering procedure to use. In its place, according to the law, when a projected expenditure should be in the abbreviated procedure which itself involves a tender procedure open to all the world, and with advertising.
however, the report does not go into figures of how much it has managed to restrict the use of these smaller contracts. According to the document, the Authorities resort to “repeatedly” to the splitting of contracts for the same services. Sometimes, the duration exceeds the planned legally. And in other cases the billing exceeds the amounts awarded. The analysis also found that in breach of the obligation contained in the act of soliciting three bids for the contract less. In summary, from the analysis it is inferred that still abuse this figure, which reduces the competitive strain and makes it easier for the government of the day give the job to a company next. In this way, something that many times is done for simple convenience you can even end up degenerating into a kind of corruption, according to denounce the experts consulted.
The office of recruitment reproaches, in addition, that are not documented individually each of the contracts and, accordingly, may not examine in depth what is going on. Could be better if the processing of the contracts were scanned. However, despite the fact that it is required that 100% of bidding is done electronically, only 7% of what it is, says the independent agency. This claimed that progress in digitization, now “far from being a reality.” The lack of a single database prevents the independent office can take advantage of big data to draw conclusions more defined on the public procurement, an area that according to the Treasury equivalent to 13% of GDP.
The office of recruitment alert that there may be economic data, “certain quality” to find out the savings between the budget tender and the final price of the award. This fact is very important, as it is a clear indicator of how much competition it has been given to getting the contract and reduce the cost to the public purse.The Oirescon asked to establish control measures to ensure the payment to the firms outsourced. And recommends that justify better the changes in the contracts.
