Public Policies for Procurement under COVID19

Public procurement is a main issue in the frontline of Governments fighting COVID 19 pandemic as the need for additional and urgent acquisitions as well as the need to consolidate the supply chains and to promote sustainable and innovative procurement have been a source of deep changes and main challenges disturbing public markets and invalidating several assumptions of the traditional public contracting. In this paper, the development of appropriate public policies to cope with these challenges is studied following the approach suggested by several authors and including four stages: a Stage on Facts and Issues where the main challenges and conditions are studied, the Options Stage to describe which polices and procedures can be adopted, a Values Stage stating the main values to be pursued and, finally, a Policies Stage including the selection of the recommended policies. The analysis of the challenges and facts includes the study of a taxonomy of short and longer term needs and the available options are based on the comparative study of procedures ruled by the European Directives on Public Procurement approved on 2014. The major values to be respected include the principle of competition which is a major institutional principle of the European Treaty and of the Directives as well as the goal of promoting sustainable and innovative public procurement. Several indicators are suggested to describe the application of the public procurement policies adopted across EU and their comparative analysis is presented using the TED data for contracts concerning COVID 19. The case of Portugal is discussed and final remarks about the recommended public policies are also included herein.