The Principle of Competition in the Public Procurement System and its Impact on the Outcome of Procurement Activities

Public procurement is an important mean of responding to the needs of society. It remains a relevant issue in the current public administration research agenda, especially in Russia. Yet scarce attention has been attracted to the evaluation of competitiveness in the public procurement system in the context of the amendments to the public procurement system law passed at the end of 2017. The present study is undertaken in an attempt to address this research gap: investigate competition in public tender activities and identify the benefits of public e-procurement policy implementation. For the purposes of this study, multiple criteria for competition effectiveness measurement are proposed and evaluated. The quantitative research methodology is recruited. Comparative analysis of the open procurement activities based on descriptive statistics is conducted with the help of open data retrieved from the Unified Information System. The research findings suggest that the implementation of e-procurement policy has an ambiguous impact on the development of competition in the public tender market. Based on the final results, some practical implications and policy recommendations are provided in the end section of the paper