Ecuador: Government seeks savings in corrections to public purchases

The government of Ecuador will seek to save up to US$400 million through corrections to its public purchasing processes, which include restrictions on contracting through special regimes and amendments to the law.

The National Public Procurement Service (Sercop) carried out a study with the World Bank and the conclusion was that there were widespread abuses when using the so-called special regime figure, as it was not used exclusively to attend to exceptional cases.

“When analyzing the prices of contracts under the special regime versus those hired by the common system, if they had entered competition, the study shows a possible savings of up to US$1,400 million dollars, since the prices obtained under the special regime were sometimes twice as expensive, on average,” said Silvana Vallejo, director of the Public Procurement Service.

“We have specific cases that we have detected. They were contracts for suppliers that did not meet requirements. That shows that this obviously lends itself to corruption. Not all cases are like that, some could have gone through their processes responsibly” she concluded.

Full Content: El Telegrafo

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