Eurocham Releases Damning China Procurement Report

April 21, 2011 Posted by China Briefing Reading Time: < 1 minute

Apr. 21 – The European Union Chamber of Commerce in China has just released a 54 page report on the findings of European businesses bidding for procurement contracts in China. In a hard hitting study, the findings demonstrate that foreign businesses are effectively barred from the US$1 trillion public procurement market in China due to poor and opaque implementation of procurement regulations.

An unprecedented number of complaints concerning foreign companies bidding for Chinese contracts were received by the chamber last year, which stated that rules were “disjointed and inconsistently implemented, causing substantial missed opportunities for European businesses.”

China’s domestic procurement market is estimated to be worth about 20 percent of its total GDP, and includes government spending at all levels for equipment, vehicles, and plants and machinery for public projects.

“It is vital that this enormous market be regulated in a transparent and non-discriminatory way,” said EU Chamber President Jacques de Boisseson.

In the report, European businesses involved in medical apparatuses, IT, communications and wind power all said they had difficulty in obtaining timely and accurate data about procurement projects and bidding for tenders. Often these were passed only to Chinese suppliers and not to foreign ones, in contravention of China’s WTO agreements. China has had a history of corruption in domestic procurement, with the current Minister of Railways Liu Zhijun currently under investigation for corruption and the taking of bribes.

The EU Chamber report can be downloaded for free here.

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