关于公共采购的见解：B-READY项目的主要发现（英）

Antoni Albert Nogués Comas and Kerenny Torres Negrón1 his Brief examines regulatory indicators that promote firm entry, ease of contracting with thegovernment, fairness, transparency, and best value for money in public procurement systems across 50economies. Drawing on indicators from the novel Public Procurement category under the MarketCompetition topic of the World Bank’s Business Ready (B-READY) project, the analysis developsComposite Procurement Category scores categorized by economy income level. This approach offers a newperspective on considering procurement regulations and services from a competition standpoint. The studypresents the current conditions and reveals that good practices in fostering competition in public procurement canbe adopted and implemented regardless of an economy's income level. Findings show a significant variation in theadoption of digital procurement, which affects transparency and entry barriers, as well as disparities in genderrepresentation, which weakens competition and dynamism in these markets.TPublic Disclosure Authorized Public procurement refers to the process by which centralgovernments, regional or local authorities, purchase work, goods,orservices from companies.The government,through itssignificant and discretionary demand, wields considerable power toshapemarkets,drive competition,and foster dynamism,potentiallyleading to innovation,efficiency,and growth.Byutilizing public procurement as a powerful tool, governments canachieve cost-effective social and economic policy objectives. Forexample,a modern public procurement system,designed toprovide access to all firms by removing entry and informationalbarriers in government markets, is associated with higher firmparticipation in tenders (Hjort et al. 2020; Knack, Biletska, andKacker 2019); lower prices (Adam, Sanchez, and Fazekas 2021);,greater innovation; and more sustainable solutions.Public Disclosure Authorized support firms that participate in public procurement can createbarriers that lead to fewer bids in public tenders. Single-bidderpublic procurement tenders (excluding framework agreements anddirect negotiation) reached a ten-year high in the European Union(EU) in 2022, according to the 2023 EU Commission's SingleMarket Scoreboard. While different mechanisms might influencethis outcome, research using Tenders Electronically Daily (TED)data shows that fewer bids are observed in settings where the qualityof procurement systems is low (Tas 2020), suggesting the sizeableopportunity for improvements even in high-income economies.Forthis,actionable measures must be derived using acomprehensiveanalytical framework.The Methodology forAssessing Procurement Systems (MAPS), while being the goldstandardfor assessing procurement systems,produces fewassessments annually due to its comprehensive scope and depth,highlightingthe need for complementary indicators that areregularly updated. Because public procurement is an essential function in publicadministration,nearly all modern economies have enactedprocurement rules or regulations, with 73 percent adopting digitalplatformsto carry out these processes(World Bank PublicProcurement Database 2020). However, the effectiveness of thepublic procurement process in encouraging tender participation,competition, and innovation depends largely on the quality of itsregulatory design and the complementarity of public services.Research shows that better procurement regulations significantlyboost bidder participation and increases fiscal savings (Hoekmanand Taş 2022, Iimi 2006), with e-procurement among the policyinterventionswith the greatest positive impact in promotingcompetition (Adam, Sanchez, and Fazekas 2021; Lewis-Faupel etal. 2016).Public Disclosure Authorized Measuring and benchmarking conditions conducive to higherfirmparticipation in tenders requires a practical overarchingapproachthat quantifies indicators annually into comparablescores. Several efforts to diagnose and measure deficiencies incompetition in public procurement have considered large-scaleadministrative data focused on competitive outcomes. But lack ofstandardization, and of concrete actionable items that can betracked by policy makers, as well as poor availability of quality datafor lower-income economies, makes existing databases impracticalto inform governments. Relying solely on administrative data alsoignores the perceptions of firms, which play an important role intheir decision to participate in tenders (Colonnelli, Loiacono,Muhumuza, and Teso 2024; Cocciolo, Viganola, and Doino2024). Even in markets with many capable suppliers, deficiencies in theregulatory framework or in the provision of public services to Bridgingthis gap,the World Bank has used expertquestionnairesto benchmark key regulations and buildeconomy-level data sets that expand coverage to include developingeconomies. The Benchmarking Public Procurement report (WorldBank 2017a) and the Contracting with the Government indicatorin th