For the business sector in Costa Rica, the large number of direct contracts between state institutions implies a number of defects and abuses in the use of public funds.
The employers' guild is of the opinion that in direct contracting there is no guarantee that the best use is actually being made of public funds, and there are indications of a lack of transparency in contracts. Some of them have even been declared confidential.
In the Legislative Assembly a bill is being discussed that would allow for hiring done by government entities not to require the endorsement of the Comptroller General of the Republic.
Bill 20.202 is an initiative of the General Comptroller of the Republic, which put forward a proposal with the aim of reducing the time and the bureaucracy involved in the review and subsequent endorsement of each contract.
The public sector felt to be the most corrupt is still Nicaragua (transparency level 26 on a scale from 0 to 100), followed by Guatemala (28), Honduras (30), El Salvador (36), Panama (38) and Costa Rica (58).
In 2016 the perception of corruption in public institutions increased in all Central American countries except Guatemala, where it remained as in 2015 and in Costa Rica, where it fell.
In the past five years direct contracting on the part of the State has increased by 90%, undermining fair competition between suppliers and adequate transparency in the use of public resources.
As the Comptroller General of the Republic points out, although the option to use the mechanism of direct purchase rather than holding a tender is legal, state entities should not abuse its use, as they have been doing in recent years.
There is a striking difference between the offers received by the Ministry of Finance in Costa Rica, in a competition which was held exclusively between state entities in order to avoid mandatory controls on public procurements.
EDITORIAL
In Costa Rica, there is a new phenomenon not seen before: the illogical is no longer surprising, and, what is worse, the unexplainable is accepted as normal.
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