The number of health-related public procurement tenders announced by governments and international organisations in emerging Europe increased by 80 per cent in the first quarter of the year, according to data from DevelopmentAid, an organisation providing comprehensive information services for the international development sector.
With the health sector scrambling to ensure that it has enough resources to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, and billions of euros allocated to facilitate the virus response, the number of tenders jumped from 65 in the fourth quarter of 2019 to 116 in the first three months of 2020. The number of available grants also increased, to 41.
“The figures for the 23 countries of emerging Europe account for almost 20 per cent of the global total tenders and grants related to coronavirus in the first quarter of 2020,” says Dr Mircea Chiriac, senior data analyst at DevelopmentAid.
“The importance of this growing trend can also be underlined by a qualitative difference in the nature of the announcements,” adds Dr Chiriac. “When looking at the fourth quarter of 2019, we analysed the number of overall ‘health’ related procurement notices because the term ‘Covid’ was not yet present, while the data for the first quarter of 2020 is mainly related to Covid. It’s clear that the growth of funding for the countries of emerging Europe is now significantly higher.”
Besides national governments, the leading donors in the region are the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Bank. As for grants, most funding came from non-profit organisations, such as the European Commission and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Globally, having posted 87 out of the total of 384 Covid-related tenders, the World Bank Group was the most active donor. It is followed by the Asian Development Bank with 31 tenders and the UNDP with 30 tenders. The European Commission posted 29 announcements while Germany’s GIZ issued 12 announcements.
DevelopmentAid has previously reported on the rising number of tenders and grants relating to the health and humanitarian sectors. The organisation added over 930 tenders and 340 grant notices relating to these sectors in Q1 2020. Compared to Q4 2019, when 786 tenders and 213 grants were available, these numbers have increased by 18 per cent and 60 per cent respectively.
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