Huge changes in Hungarian public procurement

The value of public procurements in Hungary fell by 54 percent year on year in the first half, to HUF 1,304 billion (EUR 3.45 billion), according to the Public Procurement Authority, while the number of public procurement procedures dropped by 11 percent to 3,478.

The decline was connected to the global crisis, the impact of the war in Ukraine and the “drastic” rise in construction industry prices, László Kovács, the authority’s head, told a press conference.

The value of construction procurements alone dropped to HUF 411 billion (EUR 1.09 billion) from HUF 1,954 billion (EUR 5.17) in the base period, he noted, citing the authority’s latest report.

The share of single-bid procedures was 6 percent for contracts with values below the threshold for inclusion in the EU’s tender system, and 21 percent for contracts with values over the threshold. Those ratios were 8 percent and 31 percent, respectively, when applying the EU’s methodology based on a narrower range of contracts.

Hungary aims to reduce the number of single-bid procurement procedures for contracts with values over the EU tender threshold from 35 percent of the total to below the EU average of around 20 percent, he said.

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