Translation of small purchases into electronic format has allowed more competition and economy in the segment, however, government contractors are faced with a lack of flexibility in Contracting and increasing trend on price priority sometimes at the expense of quality, report of experts from the Higher school of Economics. In this case, while the operators of e-shops do not fully use their potential, but high competition makes the developers to develop the segment. Limiting the market of small procurement may lead to inefficiencies and return customers to direct trading, experts warn.The digitalization of the procurement of small volume (up to 300 thousand and 600 thousand roubles, depending on the item) has helped to improve transparency and increase competition in the sector, experts of the Higher school of Economics (HSE) in the report “Monitoring the procurement of small volume”. Its authors — Konstantin Golovinsky, Marina Turcan and Elena Belogurova under the leadership of first Vice rector of the HSE Alexander He analyzed more than 660 thousand schedules for small purchases for 2018-2019 in a Unified information system in procurement (ENI), more than 3.3 million small purchases at the major aggregators and electronic stores. Recall that the monitoring of small purchases is complicated by the fact that customers do not place data on the conducted procurement register of contracts in the EIS. In this case, as estimated by experts of the HSE, on small purchases accounted for 10% of government contracts at an average delivery cost of 42.5 thousand rubles— this is usually the purchase of supplies, consumables, and service.According to the report, the average competition in the electronic stores was 1.9 requisition in 2018 and 2.1 of the application in the first half of 2019. The average decline in prices of small purchases amounted to 8% and 7.6% respectively compared to 6.5% and 5.3% savings in a competitive procurement under the law on the contract system (law 44). The highest efficiency was recorded in Moscow region (19% and 16.7%). Such indicators of small purchases can be explained by the speed of their conduct (on average one or two days), lack of security and terms of payment deliveries.Despite the positive effect of automation of small purchases, the authors also point to its costs. So, with the exception of certain regional practices, the main criterion for supplier selection is price, there is no possibility of prolongation of the contract with the bona fide counterparty, which is important in areas such as food or cleaning services (up a fifth of small purchases). The potential of digitalization is underused. In particular, a high rate of savings can be attributed to inefficient pricing: to determine the initial price, customers mainly use the request ol��of Glojene, comparison of market prices (on other sites) have to do manually. Until there are purchases directly from the marketplace that engages in procurement of small dealers and brokers.In General, the authors noted the high competition among developers and operators of e-shops that offer more quality services at the request of bidders. “Customers and suppliers together to develop segment and optimize the procurement of small volume, all the laws of the market economy”,— experts say. At the same time limiting the number of services may lead to a decline in their quality and decrease in the efficiency of small purchases.We will remind that since March 1, 2019, the government has limited small purchases at the Federal level, they are conducted using a single aggregator for trade “birch”. From October 2020 small procurement will be transferred to the electronic platform, synchronized with ENI— it is connected with raising the ceiling on small purchases up to 3 million rubles and the necessity of their accounting, with the purchase of up to 600 thousand rubles can be held at regional sites (see “Kommersant” on 6 February). However, experts doubt the feasibility of the initiative, because multiple sites will increase the costs of customers and suppliers. In particular, there is a risk of increase in the share of non — competitive procedures for saving customers can get back to direct procurement.The authors propose to take into account the regional experience of small purchases, allowing to carry out their existing e-stores must also be provided purchases are not according to the price criterion. Note that the regulators have repeatedly drawn attention to the complexity of the regulations of small procurement, the Finance Ministry has proposed to transfer management to the regions (see “Kommersant” on 3 December 2019).Diana Galieva
