Abstract
This chapter empirically evaluates the public procurement system in Croatia, a transition country and a new EU member state. The research is based on empirical evidence collected by surveying a large sample of companies. It investigates how businesses as actors in the public procurement tenders evaluate the system and what their perceived and experienced views are on the various components of public procurement. The baseline model borrows from the literature by including companies’ characteristics in terms of company size and sector of business operations. Furthermore, it assumes that there are significant differences in attitudes and ratings among companies that have participated in public procurement as direct suppliers compared to companies that have been indirectly involved as subcontractors. The business opinion on the public procurement system procedures and regulations has been assessed as well, providing insights into the business perceptions on main public procurement principles: accountability, effectiveness, value for money, integrity and achieving the EU standards. Special attention has been dedicated to the assessment of corruption risks in public procurement. The evidence for Croatia reveals that in spite of the EU standards introduced there are still, at least from the point of view of companies, irregularities and lack of trust in the national public procurement system.
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Notes
- 1.
Lider, 13 December 2013, pp. 26–28
- 2.
For the effects of SME-friendly policies in the public procurement domain, see Loader (2013).
- 3.
Flynn et al.CitationRef>) offer/CitationRef>) offer a literature review.
- 4.
In 2012, out of 97,254 companies in Croatia, 99.6Â % were SMEs: 98.3Â % were small and 1.3Â % were medium-sized companies (CEPOR 2013).
- 5.
The authors would like to thank Transparency International Croatia for supporting the survey fieldwork conducted by the Promocija Plus agency which supplied us with the original database for this research. The survey tool development and interpretation of the results remain the authors’ responsibility only.
- 6.
The questionnaire is available from the authors upon request.
- 7.
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Budak, J., Rajh, E. (2016). The Public Procurement System: A Business Sector Perspective. In: Ateljević, J., Trivić, J. (eds) Economic Development and Entrepreneurship in Transition Economies . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28856-7_5
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