Estonia, EU – Baltic States, Financial Services, Legislation, Markets and Companies

Public procurements with a value higher than the international threshold were held for contracts worth altogether 1.3 billion euros in Estonia last year and such procurements accounted for more than half of the total value of public procurements, the Ministry of Finance said.

"The indicators from the European Union Single Market Scoreboard confirm that the developments in Estonia's public procurement policy in recent years have been consistent with the general principles of the European Union, such as ensuring the best price-quality ratio, equal treatment, and transparency," said Kristel Mesilane, head of the department for public procurements and state aid at the ministry.

In the Single Market Scoreboard, member states are rated on nine different indicators related to the organization of public procurements, such as the proportion of procurements with one bidder, the proportion of procedures awarded only on the basis of lowest price, the value of procurements advertised on Tenders Electronic Daily (TED) as a proportion of national gross domestic product (GDP) and similar.

The rankings are based on the announcements published on Tenders Electronic Daily (TED), an online publication of the EU Official Journal, which means that only procurements greater than the international threshold are taken into account.

It appears from the same data that the proportion of procurements with one bidder in Estonia declined by 5% year over year to 17%, the proportion of procurements held by multiple institutions together grew from 7% to 9%, the proportion of procedures which were awarded only on the basis of lowest price was down 13% at 65%, and the total value of procurements announced via TED was up by 1.7% at 8.7%.

In just two years, Estonia advanced from the lowest rated group of EU member states to the highest rated group when it comes to the organization of public procurements.

In addition, Estonia stands out for high quality of information published on TED. Mandatory information provided by Estonia to TED is comprehensive, which results from the automatic checks featured in the IT solutions of the Estonian Public Procurement Register.

The countries with the highest combined scores on the Single Market Scoreboard for 2016, in addition to Estonia, are Finland, Sweden, Norway, Lithuania, Poland, Belgium and France. Countries in the middle group include Latvia, Austria, Germany and Netherlands.