The result of this new scrutiny is a seemingly endless succession of scandals. The administrator of a public hospital is caught paying three times the retail price for disposable diapers from a supplier who, it turns out, is a member of his family. A legislator is found to have given lucrative consulting contracts to associates who never showed up for work. A new paved road ends up costing a municipal government 150 percent more than the original estimate, but two years later it is full of potholes because of shoddy construction. The examples are legion, and no country is immune.
Public outrage is fueled by a growing awareness of the real costs of the problem.
Another way to look at the magnitude of these squandered resources is to consider that most countries could double their spending on health and education if they could recover the 15 to 20 percent of the public budget that is lost to flawed procurements. But financial savings are not the only benefits to be reaped from ending fraud and inefficiency in public procurement. Unlike traditional efforts to reduce government expenditures such as cutting public-sector salaries savings derived from reforming public procurement do not usually have a steep social or political cost. On the contrary, a government that can show it has saved taxpayer money by procuring high-quality goods and services at the lowest possible prices will probably fare very well in the next elections. Part of the answer is that the status quo can be very attractive to the companies and individuals that are profiting from government business under the current system.