10ders Observatory: Strong increase in the total value of contracts awarded in the EU during the third quarter of 2009

According to the estimates of "10ders Observatory, when compared to the same quarter of 2008, the European Union countries (EUR27) ended the third quarter of 2009 with an important growth (+35.81%) in the total value of contracts awarded which are above EU procurement thresholds and must be published in the OJEU.

This data reinforces the trend we announced you a few weeks ago regarding the increase of over 13% in the number of contracts issued and awarded at European level in the 27 European Union countries in relation to the third quarter of 2008.

However, as in the map of the evolution of the awarded contracts that 10ders Observatory released a couple of weeks ago, the differences between countries and types of contracts are also very significant and, therefore, so is the variation of public money allocated through competitive bidding in contracts whose value is above EU procurement thresholds.

For example, the strong growth shown in the chart is largely attributable to the high increase of the total value of service contracts awarded (+58.52%), which has been rising throughout 2009, mostly due to public resources channelled to stimulate economic recovery. The total economic value of contracts awarded for supplies (+20.14%) and public works (+12.44%) has also grown over the third quarter of 2008, but much less.

By countries, the situation is very diverse, showing very high increases, such as the experienced by the UK (+77.03%) in all types of contracts, by Belgium (+135.09%) mainly in public works, or by the Netherlands (+85.76%) and Sweden (+93.89%) with an important increase in service contracts awarded.

EUR16 growth has been much lower (+9.96%) than the increase within EUR27 (+35.81%), since neither Sweden nor the UK add their strong growth figures to this group, but also because of the large drop in the economic value of public contracts awarded in countries like Spain (-30.15%), Ireland (-33.06%) and Italy (-14.73%).

When transferring all these data to a map, the increases of public money awarded in contracts whose value is above community thresholds and were published in the OJEU in the third quarter of 2009 compared to the same period in 2008, show an interesting insight into the evolution of public spending directly injected into contracts awarded through competitive bidding with companies, from which you can surely draw interesting conclusions:



As in previous occasions, we hope this article that our colleagues at "10ders Observatory" have prepared for Euroalert.net blog, will give you some valuable information. If you need any more detailed data sets for your own analysis, you can contact them at info@euroalert.net.

PS: Very soon, we will be publishing our estimate compared with the evolution of European Union GDP by 2009.