COMMENTARY: India - Stop cartelization in public procurement

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“Public procurement in India constitutes about 30% of the GDP, with the total annual expenditure of around 15-20 Lakh Crores and that for Union Government alone in the range of Rs. 2.5 – 3 Lakh Crores. This is the government activity most vulnerable to corruption, not only between the suppliers and the government staff but also within the suppliers themselves. The latter emerges in the form of cartels, i.e., bid rigging and collusive bidding. Though integrity of the procuring staff and competition between suppliers are two sides of the same coin, yet so far, the focus has largely remained on tackling departmental corruption and, except for blacklisting / holiday listing etc. against suppliers for a few years, there is hardly any policy to report bid rigging by suppliers or to detect and punish cartels of suppliers. There has been a lack of focus on the supply side issues, particularly, cartelization due to poor awareness on the tools of competition law in India.”
Read the article by MM Sharma, Vaish Associates, Advocates, in Mondaq. https://groups.undp.org/t/3911810/762650/15540/5/

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