47.500 million Euros. The payment of unemployment people is almost doubled. This is the quantity that, according to the National Market and Competitiveness Commission, the Spaniards are wasting for the inefficiency in which the public service incurs on when it goes shopping. No less than de 4.6% of our country’s PIB. Because to be unable to buy properly when you are the one that more buys- let’s remind that according to the CNMC, the public contracting represents the 18.5 % of the PIB, this is, about 194.000 million Euros- is more than serious.
The inform the CNMC’s President, Jose María Marín Quemada; presented some weeks ago, points that, despite the regulatory improvements introduced in Spain and Europe, still exist the structural problems in the public contracting, problems that in several cases do not guarantee the preservation of the markets’ effective concurrence. This way, the supervisor organism adds that when competitiveness fails there is an invariably loss of economic efficiency and an unnecessary waste of public resources, always scarce and costly.
“Because of this fact, the ‘superegulator’ considers that the public service in Spain must impose a public contracting increasingly transparent, super competitive and economically efficient, in benefit of the citizens, the companies and the proper Public Administration.”
In this way, it is essential, inside the public contracting, to enhance the access to the information for bidderers and to exist more transparency and advertising in the procedures in order to enable a greater internal control and the comparison of similar situation.
The report also asks for an evaluation of economic efficiency and an effective competitiveness, both for the contracting body –that should justify the necessity of contracting and the chosen procedure-, and for the specialized external specialized.
Moreover, it defends a greater advantage of the information technologies, for example, for the achievement and use of tender data base that allows the supervision of economic efficiency by specialized organisms. Furthermore, advocates for a greater administrative cooperation with the aim of reduce the asymmetry of information existing in the public contracts. The CNMC asks to simplify the procedure in the public contracting, with the use of electronic procedure and with the reduction of the regulation normative of the subject.
When from this tribune we have advocated from years for the efficiency in purchasing methods, it is not less than satisfactory to extend the conviction that something has to be done in this issue. However, the report of the CNMC, being right with the diagnosis, incurs in the same mistake that we have already reported in the past, which is no other than the emphasis of being another public service the one that has to be responsible for his own purchasing
“Acquire the expertise to reduce these 47.500 million Euros to 0 would be extremely onerous for the Public Service, more over when the improvements that includes de report of the CNMC, could be summarize in only one: to make the public service to buy the same way the private service already is buying.”
Being this way, we could think that it would be better to open the door to the private initiative, as it has be done in other field of the public service where it is proved a higher efficiency. To externalize the purchasing to private operators that are purchasing experts would allow facing a great amount of these 47.500 millions, existing a big margin in order to pay this private activity with the saving achieved; this way it would not suppose an added expense for the battered public arks.
For the centralization of the supplying public contracts that has started up recently, in a good direction, it is just only one of the issues that could redound in a lower cost for the citizen. In addition, this centralization should ensure also a top dimension in order to become operating and will not end generating more stopping troubles for the different purchasing profiles in the different public entity where their purchases finally get centralized.
As we have pointed in this magazine, purchasing is not easy. Purchasing light, telephone, gas, cleaning, security, maintenance, etc. in different markets which are increasingly competitive is complicated; as it is shown in all big companies in this company that have purchasing departments full of high qualified that fight for the last euro knowing that a saved euro is a earned euro. Despite the great progress in the regulation both European and Spanish, the true is that the public purchasing methods have not modernized at the same pace as the rest of the Spanish economy and now the moment of doing something has arrived because the indentation starts to be unmanageable.
