Belgian government services only disclose in one out of three cases which companies participate in the tenders they have issued and to whom they award the contract. De Tijd writes this on Saturday based on a study of public tenders between 2017 and 2022.
The data analysis of the publicly available information on public procurement reveals serious shortcomings on the part of governments: even the many billions of euros they spend to purchase products and services on the private market or to finance construction projects transparency. Barely 15 percent of that budget has been made known in the past six years.
In principle, Belgian law obliges to announce who wins the contract for all tenders from 140,000 euros. Yet the number of Belgian government services, at federal, Flemish and local level, that communicate openly about tenders is remarkably low.
Only a minority – 347 of the more than 1,000 governments that bought for at least 1 million euros in the past six years – disclosed who was awarded the contract in more than half of the cases.
SMEs are losing out to large companies
It is also striking that a limited number of large companies won many contracts in the past six years. SMEs were much less represented. In 2021, they received barely a third of all Belgian government contracts. With this low score for SMEs, our country dangles at the back of the European peloton, just ahead of Romania.
Prime Minister Alexander De Croo (Open Vld) is working on a bill to improve the transparency of government contracts.
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