Small tender, but expensive – Newspaper Kommersant No. 1 (7446) dated 01/09/2023

Data on the volume of purchases by the state and state-owned companies for 2022 indicate an increase in negative trends in government orders. Analysts of Kontur.Torgov, after processing the EIS data in the field of procurement, calculated that their total volume under 44-FZ in value terms increased from 12.4 trillion to 12.9 trillion rubles. (by 4.2%), the number decreased from 3.7 million to 3.5 million (by 6.3%), and the average price increased to 3.3 million rubles, that is, immediately by 16%.

The results may indicate that customers, with a limited budget, were forced to abandon part of the purchases due to the rise in price of the most necessary ones. The increase in the cost of one purchase can be explained, among other things, by a decrease in the level of competition in government orders: on the one hand, the state expanded the practice of non-competitive purchases from single suppliers, on the other hand, the suppliers themselves left the market due to the risks of disrupting contracts and tightening sanctions. In addition, suppliers do not have time to adapt to numerous changes in the procurement legislation, analysts at Kontur.Torgov say. As a result, the number of suppliers who entered into government contracts decreased by 35%, while the number of failed purchases increased by 9% (from 325,000 to 355,000).

Procurements by state-owned companies are less amenable to analysis, since since the spring, some customers may not publish procurement data due to the risk of secondary sanctions – up to half of all state JSC purchases could fall into the “invisible” circuit (see “Kommersant” dated August 3, 2022) , but in reality it is impossible to estimate their volume. So far, we can only state that in the “open” part, the number of purchases by the State JSC has decreased from 1.97 million to 1.73 million (by 12%), although customers preferred to split them up to protect suppliers who refuse to participate in large purchases due to sanctions risks and long execution times (prices for goods, works and services are constantly changing). The average purchase price decreased from 8.5 million to 7.4 million rubles. The volume of the open part of the purchases of state-owned companies fell to 14.5 trillion rubles. (22.9 trillion rubles a year earlier), but the trends seen in them may not apply to the “secret” order of state-owned companies and its pricing policy: even the Ministry of Finance will regain the right to know about what is happening there only from April 2023 and, most likely, will close even macro data on such purchases, as well as previously foreign trade statistics.

Diana Galieva