Government agencies such as IMSS, Once TV, Capufe, and Sedena have opted for non-competitive contracts at the start of the year.
The Secretariat of National Defense is one of the agencies that has awarded the most direct contracts
President Claudia Sheinbaum began her first year of government in the same way as her predecessor, awarding the majority of public contracts through direct awards.
According to the Compranet platform, of the just over 1,800 contracts that have been awarded for 2025, 69 percent were awarded directly. Only 482 contracts, that is, a quarter of the total, were awarded through public bidding.
In the last six-year term, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador disfavored open tenders in public procurement of goods, services, and works, opting for direct awards, despite warnings from various organizations that they encourage corruption.
In 2024 alone, 78.7 percent of the contracts published on the federal government’s purchasing portal were awarded without a tender. This was a constant during the last six-year term. In 2023 alone, eight out of 10 contracts were awarded directly and in the previous two years, it was a similar proportion.
Organizations such as the Federal Economic Competition Commission (Cofece) and the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (Imco) warned about the risks involved in not holding transparent public tenders in public procurement processes.
99 of the contracts that Birmex received this year were direct
“Although direct awarding reduces administrative costs, its use does not ensure that the State is purchasing under the best possible conditions of price, quality, and opportunity,” Cofece indicated in its Competition Agenda for an Integral Exercise in Public Contracting, at the beginning of the López Obrador administration.
Meanwhile, Imco said in March of last year that public contracting is one of the most vulnerable sectors to corruption, whether due to purchases with over costs, payments to front “ghost” companies, or tenders carried out “on the fly.”
According to the agency, Laboratorios de Biológicos Reactivos de México (Birmex) is the agency with the most direct awards, with 99 percent of its contracts awarded through this means.
Among the agencies and organizations of the Federal Public Administration (APF) that have opted for direct awards at the beginning of this year are the IMSS, Once TV, Caminos y Puentes Federal (Capufe), as well as the Secretariat of National Defense (Defensa).
The amount of contracts for direct awards for 2025 is around five thousand 120 million pesos, which is equivalent to almost a third of the total assigned at the beginning of the year.
5.1 billion pesos add up to the contracts assigned for this first year of government
The IMSS has delivered just over a quarter of the contracts awarded directly at the beginning of this year, in addition to awarding the highest amounts, for hemodialysis services and laboratory studies for this year, both for more than one billion pesos to the companies Centro de Diagnóstico Ángeles and Biodist.
What this government has reduced, at least at the beginning of the year, are restricted tenders, that is, those with an invitation to at least three companies.
Of the first contracts of the APF entities for 2025, 54 have been awarded through restricted competitions, which corresponds to three percent of the total.
Last year, the contracts awarded through this means were equivalent to 5.1 percent of the total awarded by the government, according to the Compranet platform.
Among the federal entities that have opted for public tenders, the Secretariat of Infrastructure, Communications, and Transportation (SICT) stands out, as well as the IMSS itself.
In December, the Mexican Chamber of the Construction Industry (CMIC) highlighted the intention of the new government to give greater participation to the private sector in public works, with more tenders by the APF agencies, companies, and organizations.
TYT Newsroom
