Dominican government launches Eficompras online store for minor purchases

The Dominican government has launched Eficompras, a new digital platform designed to simplify minor government purchases by creating an online store experience for public institutions. This initiative aims to replace the traditional procurement model with a more efficient system where suppliers can permanently list their offerings online.

The platform is integrated into the Public Procurement Electronic System (SECP) and is intended for the acquisition of common goods valued below 268,111.38 pesos. Instead of waiting for traditional bidding processes, suppliers will have their offers available online continuously. Public entities can then select items, add them to a virtual cart, and proceed with the contractual steps, mirroring online shopping.

President Luis Abinader inaugurated the platform at the National Palace, emphasizing its strategic importance for supporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). He stated that Eficompras applies principles of favorability towards national production, local development, and inclusion. A key objective is the regionalization and diversification of suppliers, addressing the historical concentration of contract awards in the Greater Santo Domingo and Santiago regions.

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One of the explicit strategic objectives of the platform is the regionalization and diversification of suppliers to address the geographical concentration of awards that traditionally registered the Greater Santo Domingo and Santiago and promote the capacity to direct and acquire goods from producers in the same geographical region that carries out the purchase process.

Carlos Pimentel, Director General of the Public Procurement Directorate (DGCP), highlighted that Eficompras not only targets speed but also integrity and transparency in a segment that accounts for 89% of state transactions. To combat favoritism and directed contracts, the platform implements an anonymization mechanism. Suppliers are presented anonymously and randomly numbered, preventing the purchasing unit from knowing their identity until the process concludes, thereby fostering genuine competition.

Notably, Eficompras was developed entirely by Innova Compras, the Dominican public sector's first innovation lab, utilizing an in-house team of mathematicians, economists, lawyers, and developers from the DGCP, without reliance on external providers. The platform will be implemented gradually across different sectors, starting with institutions connected to the Integrated Financial Management System (Sigef).

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To attack favoritism and direction in contracting at the root, the platform implements an anonymization mechanism. Suppliers present themselves in the system anonymously and are randomly numbered (as Supplier 1, Supplier 2). The purchasing unit does not know who they are buying from until the end of the process, eliminating the buyer's margin of preference and promoting real competition.