A significant part of tenders in local medical procurement have been for the amount between UAH 195,000 and UAH 200,000. In 2018, healthcare departments and institutions have carried out procurement in this scope with the expected total cost of UAH 400 mln*
Transparency International Ukraine with the support of the USAID/UK aid Transparency and Accountability in Public Administration and Services/TAPAS Project has presented the report Medical Procurement in ProZorro: Express Examination 2.0. This is already a second report dedicated to public procurement in healthcare. It illustrates tendencies in the expenditure of public funds on healthcare since 2017.
Report authors have pointed out a high level of monopolization on the medication and medical equipment market. At the local level, 1% of suppliers made agreements for 50% of the total value of all agreements in these categories.
Procurement of medication and medical equipment constitutes only a third (32.2%) of all the expenditures of healthcare departments and institutions through ProZorro. A little less – 29.1% – is spent on energy. 14.2% goes to construction and maintenance of facilities.
It is the energy supplies that more than half of all non-competitive procurement of healthcare departments and institutions goes to. This is reflective of the tendencies in Ukraine in general due to low competition in the sector of utilities.
Interestingly, healthcare expenditures per capita differ vastly depending on the region. For instance, in Lviv oblast, the expenditures were the highest, with UAH 563 per person, while in Luhansk oblast, the figure was only UAH 111.
* If the procurement cost exceeds UAH 200,000, procuring entities have to go through the competitive bidding procedure. That is why some of them purposefully decrease the expected cost to the maximum allowed amount to enter into a direct agreement with the supplier they are interested in.
