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Panamacompras, an excellent business opportunity

By Juan Carlos Martinez

Many new projects are in the works with the new Martinelli administration. If you are a foreign company wondering how you can participate in some of these projects or at least find information about them, it is really not that hard. The Panama government established a web portal called Panamacompras in order to add transparency, speed and openness to the government purchasing program. It is a site where all government entities post their public tenders and by law every purchase must be posted on this site.

In the short time the site has been available to users, since 2006, it has received more that one million visitors, has over 13,000 subscribers, lists tenders from 137 government institutions and has awarded bids for over 23 billion dollars as a result of 253 thousand public tenders. On the site you can look for bids by institution, by purchase category, among other search criteria. Once you click on the tender that interests you more details are displayed and you can download the specifications for the bid, the proposal form and any annexes to the original specifications. Be warned though the portal is all in Spanish as are all the documents in it.

With the new administration´s emphasis on technological innovation PanamaCompras is getting an overhaul. The DGCP (General Directorate for Public Contracts) is investing USD10 million to finalize the cycle of bidding for government contracts or purchases on line. So far the portal only takes you to the stage where the bid is awarded, it does not generate the purchase order nor does it follow up on deliveries of contracts. These stages of the cycle still need to be done by hand and on paper. The purpose of the recently announced investment is to eliminate the deficiencies in the follow up process of public contracts, such as the expiration of compliance bonds. The new system should allow government employees to know with a few keystrokes the start, status and termination of a public contract. Today that is not possible. It is estimated that by moving towards a more electronic process the savings in paper alone could reach the amount of USD25 million for the government of Panama.

Even though there are weaknesses and gaps in the current acquisition system it is still light years ahead of other acquisition systems in third world countries. Recently the General Director of Public Contracts in Panama, the entity responsible for Panamacompras, was a guest speaker in the Third Global Conference for Acquisitions in an Electronic Government held in Washington, D.C. His presentation touched on the accomplishments of the electronic acquisitions portal Panamacompras. The Director was invited to speak by the Interamerican Development Bank (BID), the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the African Development Bank (AfDB) who organized the event.

This is interesting because the effects of advancing towards technological innovation in government make Panama a much more competitive country, they make it a country where it is easier to do business and rank it high on the lists of countries fighting corruption through transparency in government processes. They also generate savings for the government, all of which directly influence Panama´s rating in international markets.

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