An analytical piece based on full data from Bulgaria’s Electronic Public Procurement Platform (EOP) for May 2023 – June 2026: nearly 59,000 tenders, 131,000 lots and over 320,000 submitted bids. No company names — only sectors, types of contracting authority and regions.
The number that should worry everyone
There is one figure that sums up the state of competition in Bulgarian public procurement better than any report:
One participant, one bid, one possible contractor — and the authority effectively has no choice but to accept the price offered, or cancel and start over.
Across more than 131,000 lots over the last three years, the average number of bidders is 2.44 per lot. That sounds like “there is competition” — until you look at the distribution. The average is misleading: it is lifted by the few large, attractive tenders that draw six, seven or more firms. The median is 2. And the single most common scenario, by a wide margin, is one bidder.
In other words: in two thirds of cases competition is symbolic — zero or one real competitor. A genuine contest, with five or more bidders, appears in only about one in thirteen procedures.
This is not abstract statistics. Competition is the only market mechanism that drives prices down and keeps quality up. When it is missing, the taxpayer pays — and pays silently, because no one sees the bid that was never submitted.
Why a single bidder is a problem, not just a number
One could object: sometimes there is only one supplier in the market; sometimes a tender is so specific that only one firm could realistically qualify. True — but that does not explain 45%.
When nearly half of all procedures attract a single participant, the causes are almost never purely market-driven. They are a combination of:
- Overly narrow requirements — selection criteria “tailored” so that only a certain firm profile fits.
- Short deadlines — so tight that only someone who knew in advance can submit in time.
- A “closed” authority’s reputation — firms stop bidding where the outcome seems predetermined, so the lack of competition feeds itself.
- Technical barriers — complex documentation and unclear templates that discourage smaller players.
Each of these is fixable. And each leaves a trace in the data — a trace that until recently was hidden in tens of thousands of PDFs.
What happens when there is a single bidder
The authority faces a choice without a choice. It can accept the bid — whatever the price relative to the estimate — or cancel and re-announce, risking one or zero bidders again. In the vast majority of cases the single bid is accepted.
This inverts market logic. In a normal competitive procedure price forms downward — everyone knows there is another bidder ready to offer less. In a single-bidder procedure price forms upward — the sole bidder knows no one will undercut. The gap between those two prices for the same work is the hidden tax of missing competition.
The competition map: which sectors are most closed
The average of 45% hides huge differences between sectors.
Healthcare — 55% with no competition. The most alarming result. Over 42,000 lots in three years, more than half with a single bidder. Supplies of medicines, medical devices and equipment are among the most critical for the budget and at the same time among the least competitive — driven by registration regimes, exclusive distribution deals and narrow specifications pointing to a single manufacturer.
Education — 44%. Schools, universities, kindergartens; nearly 13,500 lots, often for specific equipment where the market is fragmented by supplier.
Municipalities — 37%. Paradoxically better than average — the most procedures (over 36,600 lots) and more competitive markets (construction, public works).
Ministries — 33% and agencies — 36%. Central administration shows the best numbers: larger, more visible, more scrutinised tenders attract more firms.
The lesson is unambiguous: the problem is not evenly distributed. It is concentrated — in healthcare above all.
The geography of competition
The highest share is in Sofia — 61%. The capital, with the largest market and the most potential contractors, shows the lowest share of real competition. Counterintuitive — where there are the most firms, the fewest show up. The explanation lies in the type of authorities concentrated in the capital (large central and healthcare structures with narrow specs), not a lack of market. Differences between regions are smaller than between sectors: the sector matters more than geography.
The other extreme: which tenders draw a crowd
The opposite 8% — lots with six or more bidders — are the mirror of a healthy market. A crowd appears when three conditions are met: a broad market, clear and neutral requirements, and a sufficient prize. These are standardised supplies — fuel, food, office supplies, general repairs, commodity IT — where the product is comparable and the only real field of competition is price.
These ten thousand “crowded” procedures are not an exception that spoils the statistics — they are proof that when conditions are fair, the Bulgarian market does have the capacity to compete. The lack of competition elsewhere is not about a lack of firms, but about how the procedure is designed.
Prices: what happens when there is competition after all
In lots with at least two real price bids (nearly 49,000), the data tells another story.
The gap between the highest and lowest bid averages 21% — a measure of how “loose” the market is. But more telling is the gap between the first and second lowest bid: just 8.7%. The winner and the runner-up are separated, on average, by under 9% — a thin line. For companies this is critical knowledge: the losing bid is rarely “far away” — it is usually a hair’s breadth.
Does the cheapest win? Not always
Where we can match the winner to submitted prices, the lowest bid wins in 61% of cases. Which means in 39% — almost four in ten — the tender goes to someone who did not offer the lowest price. There are legitimate reasons: quality criteria where price is only part of the score; and exclusion of the cheaper bidder — the lowest bid was disqualified for a missing document or non-compliance. This is an extremely common cause — and it returns to every bidder’s most vulnerable spot: formal compliance.
The takeaway: a low price alone is not a strategy. The winner is both competitive on price and flawless on documents.
The trend: not getting worse, but not improving
No dramatic change. Competition is not collapsing — but it is not recovering either. The system has been stuck at around 45% for a third year running. This may be the most important conclusion: 45% is not a one-off — it is a structural, stable state. The slight downward move in 2026 is encouraging, but the period is incomplete.
Consortia: almost non-existent
One tool that lets smaller firms compete for larger tenders is the consortium. In the Bulgarian data, consortia are rare — under 1% of participations. The vast majority bid alone — another symptom of a shallow market. A more active culture of consortia could widen the pool of real competitors, especially where today only one shows up.
What this all means
For the taxpayer: nearly half of public funds going through procurement are spent in an environment without price pressure. Every percentage point less competition is a percentage point higher price we all pay — and the concentration in healthcare makes it especially costly.
For companies the same data is a roadmap:
- Where there is a single bidder today, there is open territory — 45% of procedures are waiting for a second player.
- The losing bid is 8.7% on average from the winning one — small improvements in preparation pay off disproportionately.
- 39% of tenders do not go to the cheapest — compliance matters at least as much as price. The most common reason you lose is not that you are expensive, but that you are excluded.
How this analysis was made
The conclusions come from the full, primary data of the EOP over three years: nearly 59,000 tenders, 131,368 lots, over 320,000 participation records. The price findings are based on nearly 49,000 lots with two or more price bids; the “who wins” analysis on over 12,000 lots with a known winner and comparable prices. Company and authority names are deliberately omitted — the goal is to show the structure of the market.
Conclusion
Bulgarian public procurement does not have a transparency problem with the numbers — they are public. It has a problem reading them. The truth about competition is not visible in a single notice; it appears only when you gather 131,000 of them and look at them together. And then one number remains: 45%. One in two tenders — no contest. A third year running. Worst in healthcare.
The good news is that all of this is measurable. And what is measurable can be changed — by authorities that want more bidders, and by firms that finally see where an empty table is waiting for them.
This is exactly the intelligence behind our competitor & history analysis and our fit scoring — so you can find the procedures where you have a real chance.
— Analysis of open EOP data, 2023–2026.
