Press releases

The Federal Constitution provides the principle of mandatory bidding and that is why the public administration of any of the federal entities (Union, States, Federal District and Municipalities) are subject to the duty to bid, and should observe the provisions of Act nº. 8,666/1993, that establishes the general rules on bidding and administrative contracts.

However, there are some cases previously established by the legislature in which the principle of bidding gives way to some principles. As the principles of economy, primacy of national security or to ensure the public interest regarding the need for the state to intervene in the economy. These are the assumptions known as to exemption and waiver of bidding.

The Act nº 8,666/1993 provides detailed definitions of several situations, steps, and procedures encompassed by bidding, including definitions of public works and public services and its modes of execution, purchases, prohibitions of direct or indirect participation in bidding and technical professional specialized services.

The bidding modalities provided by the Act nº 8,666/93 are competition, pricing compilation, invitation, contest and auction, and they are determined according to the estimated value of the future contract.

Also, the Act nº 10,520/2001 provides the modality of reverse auction, that is used for acquisition of common goods and services, which are those whose performance and quality can be objectively defined (according to market standards) by the invitation to bid. This procedure can also be performed electronically.

Moreover, in order to achieve greater efficiency in public procurement, the Brazilian government created the Differentiated Procurement Regime (DPR) through Act nº 12,462/2012 and the Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) by Act nº 11,079/2004.

The DPR, in principle, was created to meet the demands arising from the execution of two major events: the Football World Cup (2014) and the Olympics (2016), but this model was later extended to other goals such as: (1) growth Acceleration Program (GAP) shares; works and engineering services under the Unified Health System – UHS; (2) prisons and social-educational service units works and engineering services for construction, expansion, renovation and administration; (3) shares in the public security; works and engineering services related to improvements in urban mobility or expansion of logistics infrastructure; and (4) contracts of shares in organs and entities dedicated to science, technology and innovation.

The DPR has some peculiarities in relation to the general system of public procurement, as, for instance, the reversal of the phases of qualification and the evaluation of bids.