Public procurement procedures exist for two reasons: to create a level playing field in which both established and new economic actors can fairly compete for government tenders; and to guarantee a free market environment in which the government can pay a competitive price for services and goods it cannot provide by itself. It is therefore of key importance that public procurement procedures are open to a wide variety of competent businesses. Tenders on which only a single bid is placed are disadvantageous for both the government and the competitiveness of the market. They are a signal that the tender description has been too narrowly formulated, and therefore indicative of potential conflicts of interest and corruption.
According to numbers from Open Data Albania, 12% of all the government funds spent in public procurement procedures in 2016 were cases of single-bid tenders: tenders to which only a single company responded with an offer. In total over 240 tenders were single-bid, with a total value of more than 3 billion lekë (~€22 million).
From a breakdown of the numbers it appears that although only 11.2% of single-bid tenders were held in Tirana (fig. 1), 38.9% of the total budget spent on single-bid tenders in Albania was spent in Tirana: more than 1.1 billion lekë (fig. 2). This discrepancy is mainly caused by one single public procurement: the second phase of the urban requalification of Skënderbeg Square, won without competition by Fusha shpk.
The high numbers in Malësia e Madhe, Korça, Rrogozhina, and Devoll are all caused by single-bid tenders in the context of the large urban requalification campaign rolled out by the Rama government throughout the country, which appears to profit mainly a small group of construction companies with close ties to the government, which do not compete on the market place but rather respond to “custom-made” tenders.
Today, the IMF made an appeal to the Albanian government to make an effort to lower the public debt, which remains about 70% of the GDP. In spite of what the government seems to think, this debt is not lowered by pushing costs into the future throw public–private partnerships, but by being smart about public procurement and acquiring a competitive price at the market. Single-bid tenders have no place in sound economic policy.
