Since the beginning of the state of emergency, the Government established that for the purchase of goods and services “urgently necessary to prevent and fight the Covid-19 pandemic” the exceptional regime of public contracting should be applied. The Public Integrity Center (CIP) drew attention to the risk of abusive use of this regime in the acquisition of goods or services that had no relation to the needs associated with the pandemic. However, in a non-transparent and very questionable manner, the Government opted for direct adjustment, among the other options provided for in Decree 5/2016 of 8 March, as a contracting modality to be applied by the entire public sector in the context of the state of emergency. In this way, they were carried out by the public sector, without giving space for due public scrutiny, since there was no clear basis for the use of these resources in the State Budget (OE) approved for 2020, more than 14 thousand contracts by direct adjustment, the equivalent to about 68 billion meticais.
The abusive use of this type of contract entails high risks of corruption in public procurement and high costs to the State's coffers.
