Page 55 - Procurement guidelines for smart sustainable cities - A U4SSC deliverable

Figure 13: An image shared on Twitter by SERCOP encouraging the public to help monitor
emergency buying

Guidance on emergency buying (Digital Buying Guide) followed, reminding contracting authorities
to:

• only use emergency buying to contract works, goods and services related to the pandemic;

• publish the details of emergency contracts on the public procurement portal within 48 hours;
and

• monitor suspicious behaviour from suppliers such as bid rigging and “price gouging”, i.e.,
charging excessive prices to take advantage of increased demand.

The results

The open data provided by the tool enabled several cases of price gouging to be exposed. One of
the worst involved the country's social security department, the IESS, buying thousands of surgical
masks (Ecuador Times, 2020) at USD 12 each, three times the normal price. Following the exposure
of the price discrepancies on Twitter, all procurement operations within the IESS were halted.

In August 2020, a report by local anti-corruption organization, Fundación Ciudadanía y Desarrollo
(FCD), revealed that:

• USD 200 million of public money had been spent through emergency buying between April
and July 2020;

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