Over 250,000 public authorities in the EU spend around €2 trillion per year (14% of EU GDP) through public procurement for services, works and supplies, according to European Commission estimations. In Bulgaria, Italy, Romania, and Spain, SceMaps has analysed the situation of three sectors where public authorities are the major buyers and which have been identified as some of the riskiest in terms of possible misuse and mismanagement of public spending: Construction, Wholesale of Fuels and Wholesale of Pharmaceuticals. The risk assessment conducted by SceMaps, based on big-data analysis, shows that public procurement in Bulgaria and Romania is more prone to suspicious behaviour by both suppliers (companies) and buyers (contracting authorities).
SceMaps makes its assessments by combining ‘red flags’, each of which indicates a risk situation which might be the result of possible corruption or conflict of interests. A single red flag is not evidence of wrongdoing, but an accumulation of these for a particular company, contracting authority, sector or country indicates suspicious behaviour in the procurement processes at both the micro (single entity) and macro (sector or country) level that needs to be closely scrutinised.