Colombia, Chile and Peru share a legal tradition, a language, a region and broadly similar procurement rules. If publication practice followed the law, their records would look alike. They do not, and the gap between them is wider than the gap between any of them and a European market — which says something uncomfortable about how much of what a public record contains is decided by administration rather than by legislation.
The same rules, three different records
Colombia publishes a value on virtually everything — 98% of sampled notices — and names the winner on every award. Chile sits in the middle at 63% priced, with the largest share of completed awards of the three. Peru states a value on fewer than a quarter of its notices. All three operate national electronic procurement systems with legal publication requirements, and none of them is failing to comply; they are simply publishing different things, and the difference compounds when anyone tries to compare them. A study of Andean procurement value would be, in practice, a study of Colombia with Chilean and Peruvian footnotes.
Charted on the one field they all publish differently, three neighbouring records stop looking comparable.
| Colombia | Chile | Peru | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Notices sampled | 1,000 | 1,000 | 1,000 |
| Value stated | 98% | 63% | 23% |
| Awards in the sample | 214 | 354 | 48 |
| Winner named, of awards | 100% | 86% | 100% |
| Median notice | COP 15,000,000 | CLP 15,848,724 | PEN 430,000 |
| Largest publisher | Universidad Nacional de Colombia (44) | Ministerio de Obras Públicas — Vialidad (28) | Gobierno Regional de Puno (22) |
What the leading buyers reveal
The largest publisher in each market points at where procurement is administered rather than where money is spent. Colombia’s is a public university, which usually means the university runs its own portal while ministries route purchases through central mechanisms that publish differently. Chile’s is the roads directorate of the public works ministry — infrastructure, published centrally, exactly as expected. Peru’s is a regional government, reflecting a decentralised system where provinces buy for themselves. Three structures, three publishing footprints, and only the Chilean one matches the intuition that the biggest spender should be the biggest publisher.
Why the comparison still matters
It would be easy to conclude that cross-country comparison is impossible and stop. The more useful conclusion is that the comparison has to be made on the field that all three actually publish, and here that field is the award with a named winner — present on 100%, 86% and 100% respectively. Supplier concentration, repeat winning and market access can all be measured across the three. Value cannot. Choosing the measure that survives in every record, and saying so, produces a smaller claim that holds; choosing the measure that only one record supports produces a larger claim that does not.
A study of Andean procurement value would be, in practice, a study of Colombia with footnotes.
WHY IT MATTERS
Regional comparisons are usually justified on the grounds that neighbouring countries share rules, and these three do — which makes the divergence in what they publish the more telling finding. Where a record states a value on 98% of notices in one country and 23% in the next, the difference is administrative practice, not law, and it is the kind of thing that can be changed without legislating. Until it is, any analysis spanning the region has to name the field it relies on and drop the markets that do not carry it, rather than averaging across a gap that large.
Data: Otnox — live procurement intelligence across 56 markets. Basis: the 1,000 most recent notices per market, fields measured individually, 2026-06-26..2026-07-26.
