Las compras públicas como herramienta de polí­tica productiva en Uruguay. Descripción de las compras públicas de TIC en 2005-2012

Public procurement is one of the tools most commonly used in order to promote the development of productive activities. Several countries applied this mechanism to promote local industries and innovation process. Nevertheless and despite being discussed in length in Uruguay, public procurement has been rarely implemented in our country for that purpose. Recently, the government has been carrying out some institutional changes that foster a rationalization of the public spending in certain areas. Also, the necessity of an active role of public procurement in the promotion of national enterprises, particularly on technology-based companies, has been stated from different areas of the political spectrum. One of the main issues regarding the implementation of this type of policies is the availability of information about public procurement. What is being bought, how much is the state paying and who are the sellers arise as key questions. In this work we systematize the available information for the ICT sector in Uruguay based on the analysis of the database compiled by the Government's Procurement and Contracting Agency (ACCE for its acronym in Spanish) for 2005-2012. The description of the data is presented along with a revision of the theoretical aspects regarding public procurement and industrial policy. The conclusions show that in the case of the ICT, the purchases registered by ACCE have scarce importance in the sector's activity. In consequence, the use of this tool should focus in specific products rather than pursuing an across-the-board promotion of the sector. Likewise and in spite of the scarcity of information, it is noted that in this sector the public agents who have the potential to promote the ICT demandled dynamism are the three biggest state-owned companies.