Public procurement is a key economic activity and a crucial pillar of service delivery. From the perspective of public sector integrity, public procurement is critical to ensuring that public funds are spent efficiently, transparently and in the public interest. The direct impacts of integrity breaches in public procurement include the loss of public funds through misallocations or higher expenses and a lower quality of goods, services and works. Indirectly, integrity breaches distort competition, limit market access and reduce foreign investment. More broadly, public sector integrity is a key element of democratic governance; corruption, fraud and conflict of interest in public procurement may also affect citizens’ trust in their governments.
Public procurement is also vulnerable to a wide range of risks beyond those directly linked to integrity, including digital, financial, reputational, social and environmental risks. These risks are often interlinked with integrity challenges, with the same root causes having varied and cascading impacts.
Effectively managing these risks is critical to ensuring that public procurement is an enabler for growth and contributes to better public service delivery as well as the digital and green transitions. Over the past two decades, Romania has improved its public procurement system, including in risk management and integrity. Nevertheless, challenges remain, and public procurement is still perceived by citizens as prone to corruption. Romania will need to effectively manage these procurement risks to achieve its objectives in areas such as efficient public spending and investments in infrastructure.
Recognising these ongoing challenges, the Romanian government has requested support from the European Commission (SG REFORM) to increase the level of integrity in public procurement, including reducing vulnerabilities and the risk of corruption as part of a broader national agenda. This report, produced under the project “Support in implementation of the integrity and anti-corruption framework in Romania, including reducing the risk of corruption in public procurement”, funded by the European Union via the Technical Support Instrument, and implemented by the OECD, in co-operation with the European Commission, seeks to support the ongoing reform of Romania’s public procurement system and increase the level of integrity in public procurement.