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.
MEPIVACAINA CON VASOCONSTRICTOR unidad
Centro Departamental de Rocha · MADEN SA
No apparent explanationUnexplained50%
El precio apenas supera el techo estadístico (p95) para un cartucho de mepivacaína 2% en presentación estándar, sin que la cantidad, la presentación ni el contexto del contrato justifiquen ese excedente.
Paid$ 1.560Usual range$ 27 – 1.505CURETA TIPO GRACEY (USO ODONTOLOGICO) unidad
Dirección Nacional de Sanidad de las Fuerzas Armadas · MADEN SA
No apparent explanationUnexplained90%
El precio unitario de la cureta Gracey es significativamente superior al rango estadístico habitual, sin justificación aparente en el contexto.
Paid$ 8.597Usual range$ 1.082 – 3.739