Your Opinion Matters – World Bank Survey on Procurement from Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs)

Public Sector Undertakings (also called “State Owned Enterprises” or SOEs) are an important part of governments across the world. The proliferation of PSUs/SOEs in India is relatively higher with SOEs operating in almost all the business areas. The number of PSUs/SOEs under federal government is more than 350 in India with a combined turnover of about US$ 400 Billion US$. As India has federal government structure, there are many more PSUs/SOEs under state governments.

For public procurement, PSUs/SOEs create a unique challenge as government is both Purchaser as well as Supplier (due to full or part ownership of PSU/SOE). Most of the governments across the world accord some preferential treatment to their PSUs/SOEs in public procurement process, which may be disadvantageous to private sector Suppliers and thus create distortion in the market. Moreover other indirect supports and ownership of PSUs/SOEs by Government sometime result in creation of monopolies in the market.

However, governments support PSUs/SOEs for some strategic reasons also. For example, to achieve supply security of critical items (which has become more relevant due to failure of global supply chains due to COVID-19); or for defense requirements of the country, where private sector cannot be trusted; or for operating in a geographical area or business segment, which is not attractive to private sector; or to provide the goods/services where government wants some control on price. Hence there are many positive sides of operation of PSUs/SOEs as supplier.

With above background, the World Bank has recently commissioned a study to understand positive and negative impacts of presence of PSUs/SOEs in Supplier Market.  We would be thankful if you kindly spare a few minutes to answer the following questions related to the above.

This Survey is available at link  https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/surveySOE (please select “India” from dropdown list of countries, the select the role of your Organization and thereafter fill-up answers in detailed questionnaire).

Please note that individual survey responses will be for internal use of the World Bank and will not be disclosed to third parties. We will also not attribute a particular comment to you to maintain confidentiality.The analysis of overall survey response will be used in the Report to be published by the World Bank.

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