What the World Bank Can Do About Bid Rigging

What the World Bank Can Do About Bid Rigging by Rick Messick

I took the World Bank to task last week for its failure to tackle bid rigging and other forms of collusion in its new procurement framework.  Despite mounting evidence that prices on many Bank-financed projects are jacked up 25%, 50%, or even more thanks to bidder cartels, the new framework does not even mention the problem let alone recommend steps to combat it.  The omission is all the worse because developing country governments and other donor agencies generally follow the Bank’s lead on procurement policy.  With upwards of $1 trillion likely to be spent on power plants, water works, and other big-ticket items in developing nations over the next decade, if the rest of the development community, like the Bank, remains blind to the risk of collusion, the potential losses could be staggering.

What might the Bank do were it to decide to amend the new framework to confront the risk of collusion in public procurement? Read more of this posthttp://globalanticorruptionblog.com/2014/05/21/what-the-world-bank-can-do-about-bid-rigging/#more-1592