Public procurement efficiency in the Slovak Republic: NUTS 3 level

Abstract

At present, public procurement processes and their efficiency represent one of the key determinants of the public finance system. The article’s main aim is to identify the impact of the number of bids, type of contract, use of EU funds, e-auction, quality criteria and the presence of a subcontractor in achieving the public procurement savings with emphasis on NUTS 3 level in Slovakia. There were analysed 957 contracts during the period 2016 – 2020. Robust estimation, which uses the WLS method, was applied to quantify the impact of determinants of public procurement efficiency on a level of savings. The results confirmed that an increase in the number of bids also increases the level of savings by 5 percentage points. The savings are higher by 6.6 percentage points if the contract is not funded by EU funds in comparison to contracts funded by EU funds. Also, the savings are higher by 7.4 percentage points when e-auction was not used. Once, the contract does not allow the subcontractor relationships, the savings are higher by 11.6 percentage points. If the quality criterion is not applied in the contract, then the savings are higher by 10.7 percentage points. The analysis confirmed statistically significant differences between individual regions in Slovakia. The most significant difference is evident between the Košice Region and the Bratislava Region, while the Bratislava Region achieved savings higher by more than 20 percentage points. Similarly, the Prešov Region achieved higher savings by more than 19 percentage points compared to the Košice Region.