Uruguay's public procurement
Price flags
Contracts where the unit price departs sharply from what the state usually pays for the same item. A flag is not an accusation: it marks something worth a look.
How it is calculated
For each combination of item, currency and unit of measure, a price baseline is built from the last 36 months. Each award's unit price is then scored against that baseline using a robust measure in log space: it uses the median rather than the mean, so a huge contract cannot mask its own anomaly.
At least 10 comparable items are needed to score a price, and 30 to assign the highest severities.
There are legitimate explanations: urgent purchases, different specifications under the same catalogue code, or items misclassified at the source.
PAROXETINA (COMPRIMIDOS) comprimido
Hospital de San Carlos · MEGALABS URUGUAY S A
No apparent explanationUnexplained55%
Paroxetina 20 MG en blíster de 30 comprimidos (presentación estándar) pagada a 6.2 UYU, apenas por encima del techo habitual (p95≈6.02) del mismo código, sin ningún factor del contrato que lo justifique.
Paid$ 6Usual range$ 4 – 6TOMOGRAFIA DE COHERENCIA OPTICA (TCO) BILATERAL unidad
Hospital de San Carlos · VISION UNO SAS
No apparent explanationUnexplained90%
El precio pagado por la tomografía está por encima del rango estadístico habitual y no hay contexto que justifique la diferencia.
Paid$ 3.875Usual range$ 2.700 – 3.756REACTIVO PARA DETECCION DE ANTICUERPO ANTI-TREPONEMA PALIDUM (SIFILIS)-TECNICA INMUNOCROMATOGRAFIA kit
Hospital de San Carlos · BIOERIX SA
No apparent explanationUnexplained90%
El precio unitario pagado por el reactivo para detección de sífilis es significativamente superior al rango estadístico habitual, sin justificación aparente en el contexto.
Paid$ 10.749Usual range$ 1.495 – 4.198