Contracts, Data and Investigations – Edition 2021-09-10
This week: G7 Interior Ministers commitments, track emergency contracts in Mexico and the Philippines, Ukraine’s school bus deals stop short, Quebec snow clearing contracts cause ‘chilling effect’
This newsletter gathers stories covering the use and abuse of government contracts during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. Share your stories and investigations with us. We’d love to read and feature them. And we’d love a like if you enjoyed the read.
G7 Interior Ministers met at Lancaster House in London this week. In their commitments, G7 countries recognized that open contracting matters in tackling the vulnerability of public procurement systems to fraud and corruption, as highlighted by the pandemic – and in this newsletter. They pledged to strengthen their public procurement systems, guided by a vision of transparency and digitization across the full procurement process, from planning to payments. They committed to “strengthen data collection systems”, and supported “open databases that are accessible and user-friendly” as critical elements of public procurement reforms and recognized the vital role of civil society and the media in monitoring anti-corruption reforms. This is the first time the G7 has committed to open contracting reforms like this. The commitments can be accessed in the annex statement against corruption and kleptocracies and our comments on them in more detail here.
There’s plenty of digging being done into Mexico’s public contracts. The Freedom of Information institute INAI has launched a new microsite listing federal and regional entities publishing open contracting data. It includes data on the country’s COVID-19 contracts, capturing more than 2,000 deals. Nine out of 10 contracts were awarded directly, reports El Economista.
Non-profit media organization Poder and data journalism outfit Serendipia Data are also tracking Mexico’s emergency contracts at: http://ComprasCOVID.mx, with the latest update from 7 September and ongoing reporting at https://contratoscovid.serendipia.digital
In the Philippines, a dataset of P20 billion (US$400 million) worth of COVID-related emergency contracts was made available by civic tech organizations We Solve PH, COVID Budget PH, and Hivos South East Asia. The dataset at https://github.com/kabante/phlcovidcontracts covers nearly 600 contracts and related data including prices. Read the report.
The Philippine International Trading Corporation was also questioned by state auditors over its use of pandemic funds after awarding P129 million worth of contracts for PPE to a supplier and overlooking lower bids. Rappler’s Lian Buan reveals which firm won the 10 contracts.
In vaccine procurement news, Albania has spent ALL3.42 billion (US$31.5 million) on four vaccines – Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Sinovac and Sputnik V – according to an analysis by Open Data Albania, as reported in Politiko.
And European countries have delivered less than 10% of the more than 200 million coronavirus vaccine doses they pledged to share with lower- and middle-income countries by the end of 2021, according to reporting by Devex’s Jenny Lei Ravelo and Vince Chadwick.
In theory, much of Kyrgyzstan’s procurement data is supposed to be open, but critical information such as prices remains unavailable and tender descriptions are obscured behind ambivalent language, according to an editorial by the nonprofit newsroom Kloop.
Back to school: As part of Transparency International Ukraine’s monitoring of the country’s public procurement, the team analyzed how many school buses were bought for the year. Only 221 school buses were purchased for UAH404 million (US$15 million) during the first eight months, despite the education ministry estimating 450 were needed, the monitoring team found.
‘Chilling effect’: A Superior Court judge in Quebec, Canada has ruled that awarding contracts through private negotiations while carrying out a public tendering process is illegal and could deter potential bidders. The City of Montreal was ordered to pay $2 million for lost profits to the firm that missed out on the snow clearing contracts, reports Montreal Gazette’s Linda Gyulai.
For our recommendations, resources and tools, check our COVID-19 resource page. This newsletter has been put together by the Open Contracting Partnership. Comments? Suggestions? Got a story you’ve written to share? Write to Sophie and Georg at gneumann@open-contracting.org. Thanks for reading.
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