The first state contract without connections: what 85 thousand contracts show
Every second winner of public procurement contracts had not won a single time the year before. Five habits of those who receive orders regularly, based on data from 84,946 contracts
The First State Contract Without Connections: What 85,000 Contracts Show
On Thursday, September 24, the khokimiyat of Navoiy region posted a procurement tender for the repair of an official minibus worth 13.7 million soums, with the deadline for submitting bids set for Monday morning. An auto repair shop that checks the platform on Tuesdays did not notice this lot. A similar service with notifications set up received it on Thursday afternoon and had four days to submit a bid. The difference is not in connections or price, but in who found out first.
Over the 12 months leading up to September 25, 84,946 contracts were concluded on the procurement platforms of Uzbekistan — covering public procurement and direct purchases on the UZEX exchange, including corporate buyers. They were awarded to 12,399 companies, of which 6,470, or 52%, had won nothing in the previous two years. At the same time, 163 companies with fifty or more wins hold a third of the contracts. This gap is explained by five habits.
Starting with small lots. The median contract of the year is 62 million soums, while 46% of contracts are cheaper than 50 million: gasoline for a nature reserve in Karakalpakstan for 7.9 million, car repairs for a lyceum in Jizzakh for 9.3 million. There are 4,087 open lots, 57% of which are cheaper than 50 million, with an average of five to six participants in them.
Choosing sectors where winners change. In machinery and equipment repair, 43% of contracts over the year went to newcomers; in real estate services, 38%; in oil and gas, 3.5%.
Checking the buyer. The number of participants in itself says nothing, but the history of contracts does. JSC "Eyvalek maxsus temir beton": 582 contracts, 34 suppliers, 55% held by one. Out of 382 buyers with 20 or more contracts, one in eight has a single supplier taking more than half, while for half of them, the leader takes less than 20% — these are the ones to start with. Red flags in the documentation: a brand name without the words "or equivalent," a staff of dozens of specialists required for a simple delivery, a submission deadline of less than three days.
Not dumping prices. Across 26,842 procurements with known starting and final prices, the median discount of the winner is 5%, while discounts greater than 15% occur in 0.2% of cases. In 337 out of 677 lots with published criteria, price accounts for 30 points out of 100. For the repair mentioned in the first paragraph, the median price of the winner across 282 comparable procurements is 11.8 million with a budget of 13.7: the price is market-rate, and a 30% discount would only eat up the margin.