Treatment of collusion in public procurement: a vision of the colombian case

Abstract

Collusion, meaning an illegal agreement in third party damage, which occursin procurement processes, is an anticompetitive agreement sanctionedby Article 47 Section 9 of Decree 2153 of 1992 and most recently by Act1474 of 2011 Anti-Corruption Statute -in which, by means of the latter Act,was raised to the category of offense was punishable previously only fromthe administrative point of view. However, the penalty established modelColombian regulations, is a model of punishment that while it is quite high,especially after the categorization of offenses of this behavior, the real problemlies in the application of the same or better, the agency responsible forits implementation. So, like any anticompetitive agreement, collusion is conduct that creates great effects on the market created by the State, taking into account that public procurement, competition moves to another stage of the competitive process, since here it competes by the market, meeting with a resultsimilar to that obtained in a monopoly situation, since that is the outcomethat maximizes total benefits that producers can obtain from the market.