Public Procurement Competitiveness in Poland in Comparison with Other EU Countries

Abstract

Competitiveness of public procurement market is rarely subject of scientific economic investigations. The Polish public procurement law takes into account mechanisms of competing economic units, however the main goal of contracting authorities is to conduct a public procurement procedure in the way to enable a realization of public contract. The work analyses legal framework for public procurement in relation to the Polish market using data coming from sources: published by the Bulletin of Public Procurement (values less than the EU thresholds) and Tenders Electronic Daily (contracts with values higher than the EU thresholds) according to three groups of contracts: supplies, construction works and services in the time periods 2000–2014 and 2010–2013, respectively. Empirical results, based mainly on the average number of bids for each tender, prove that Poland is still at the end of rank list of the EU countries. Macroeconomic approach to the subject of competitiveness of public procurement market may be misleading because the public procurements play not only economic function, but mainly social and environmental ones.