Sustainable Public Procurement in Central European Countries. Can It Also Bring Savings?

The efficiency of public resource use and its strategic framework with respect to sustainable public procurement policies, such as the most economically advantageous tender (hereafter MEAT), has become an important topic nowadays. Therefore, the study examines the determinants of savings creation within MEAT in Central European countries. It uses a dataset published in the Tenders Electronic Daily database in 2017-2018 about contract award notices and carries out a generalized linear model to study the determinants of savings creation within MEAT. The findings suggest that when services are procured within MEAT, the savings are considerably higher than compared to works. If the framework agreement takes place in a procurement process, the savings are significantly smaller. In cases where the subject of procurement is not co-financed by EU funds, the savings are higher than in the case that they are. If an open type of procurement is used, the savings are seemingly smaller than in cases where a non-open type of procurement takes place. When the contract is awarded to a single supplier, the savings are higher than otherwise. A higher number of total offers, as well as a higher number of offers from small and medium-sized enterprises, induce higher savings. It can be concluded that the use of sustainable public procurement subtly reduces the creation of savings.