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When public systems function, there’s no news that makes a splash!
by João Silva
The Electronic Purchase System (BEC) has been in operation in the State of São Paulo since 2000. It was launched by the then Governor Mário Covas and officially established by decree by the then Governor Geraldo Alckmin.
The system operated with the following procurement modalities: electronic auction of materials and services, including registration of material prices, invitation to bid for materials, and procedure for dispensing procurement of materials.
The system’s foundation consisted of: registration of public sector procurement units, registration of suppliers, catalogs of materials and services, and a price database. The system also included a Clearing mechanism that promoted payment of contracts on due dates, as procurement units could only publish their purchase notices and services once they had the necessary budgetary and financial reserves.
The site also featured normative bases and operational standards, relevant legislation and regulations, and operational manuals.
Access to information about procurements by suppliers was virtual, with standardized tenders issued by the State Prosecutor’s Office and procurement notices made available by the BEC, according to the supplier’s registered line of supply in the supplier’s cadastral register. Suppliers could offer and inform the products or services they would provide to the State in their supplier registration.
The entire system was fully transparent and could be accessed by any citizen interested, providing real-time monitoring of ongoing operations.
Recently, a new law on public procurement was launched, and the current government administration in the state of São Paulo failed to adapt the BEC to this new legislation, putting the system at risk of non-compliance with the existing legislation. Instead, they adopted a new procurement system unknown to public administration officials. This period of inaction was fatal for the BEC, a recognized national and international system.
It is strange that this fact has not been questioned by the press.
Other questions that deserve attention and are not observed by the press:
- Materiais e Serviços
- The BEC catalog of materials and services, as of 2022, consisted of 161,159 items of materials and services, classified according to the Federal Supply Classification system, an international classification system that establishes Group, Class, Material, and Item of material or service.
- In the BEC catalog, the health group consists of 46,950 items of materials, the metroferroviário group consists of 6,415 items, and the socio-environmental group consists of 2,323 items of materials. Services account for 12,067 items.
- The BEC has a team of specialized personnel responsible for specifying each item, observing universal standards and legislation that prohibits the appearance of brands.
- In the standardized tenders, the items to be acquired by the State’s procurement units are specified according to their number or code in the catalog.
2. Fornecedores
- In 2022, the Supplier Catalog consisted of 105,104 registered suppliers, including 9,507 MEs, 6,433 EPPs, and 278 cooperatives, with the remaining linked to unions, commercial associations, FIESP, and the Chamber of Commerce.
- When registering, these suppliers indicated which products or services they would provide to the State and, upon issuing procurement notices (Ocs), they received standardized tenders indicating the demand for items of materials or services required by procurement units.
3. Custo de compras e de vendas
- The enormous desburocratization of the State of São Paulo’s execution of the budget and finance system, starting from 1995/96, with the implementation of the SIAFEM, allowed, given the transparency of the State’s financial administration, to develop the BEC in the years 1998/99.
- While the execution of the budget and finance system was exercised by the State’s accountants, using 68 physical documents, with SIAFEM, the necessary documents were reduced to 07 (seven) and were electronic, filled out by employees of the State’s procurement units, trained by the school of finance at the end of 1995.
- The BEC also acted in the desburocratization of purchases and in the consequent reduction of operational costs of purchases, as tenders became standardized, containing only the numbers of catalog items to be acquired. And everything was electronic.
- On the other hand, the prices of sale of suppliers to the State of São Paulo had a reduction of 27%, as a result of:
- Competition between suppliers in reverse auctions, as only the winner of the dispute was revealed;
- Use by suppliers of robots in price disputes, which reduced prices until the margin of result established by the company was reached;
- Receipt of tenders via internet according to the items of materials or services indicated by suppliers in the supplier catalog;
- In a study conducted by FIPE-USP, it was found that the prices practiced by suppliers in the BEC were very close to market prices, meaning that suppliers did not suffer a loss when negotiating their prices with the public sector, quite the contrary, they drastically reduced their sales costs to the State.
Again, the press did not give any attention to these opportunities created by the BEC, which counted on the participation of former employees of the Mercantile Exchange to achieve its objectives.
Also, with the “discontinuation” of the BEC in January of this year, there was no single manifestation from the major entities of the State that benefited from sales to the State of São Paulo (R$ nominal of 222 billion in 23 years), such as the Commercial Association and FIESP.
João Silva – Retired. Coordinator of decentralized entities. São Paulo State Finance Secretariat – Mário Covas administration, 1995-2002
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