The 1991 constitution and public procurement. Conflicting views and deficiencies in the design of the state

Abstract

The 1991 Constitution established the obligation to the Congress of the Republic to issue a general statute procurement, which is why the Law 80 of 1993 was issued to grant greater autonomy to state agencies to contract goods and services by formulating general principles, which avoided regulating the contractual procedure in detail. However, at the beginning of the 21st century, several international organizations (such as the OECD, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund) considered that, due to the backwardness of infrastructures in the world and in particular in Latin America, it was necessary to formulate new public procurement dynamics. Since then, international organizations have had significant interference in the regulation of the Public Procurement System in Colombia through the development of diagnoses later used in Conpes documents, presidential directives, decrees and resolutions, substantially modifying Law 80 of 1993. Until now, there has been no in-depth debate within Congress on the general procurement statute, in accordance with the modifications made to the Colombian Public Procurement System (SCPC) in recent decades. This article aims to reflect on the transformations that the SCPC has undergone and their effects on the institutional design initially proposed by the 1991 Constitution.