Sealing sanctioned Russian state companies procurement data skewed statistics, even Finance Ministry unable to access entire data

Sealing the data on a part of the procurement by the sanctioned Russian state companies has led to statistics on the companies being distorted; now, even Russia’s Ministry of Finance is not able to access all of the data, reports Russian newspaper Kommersant.

Russian state companies under sanctions, due to the risk of sanctions deepening, got an opportunity to seal the information about its procurement and not publish it in the unified information system in the procurement sector.

As a result, the new procurement monitoring statistics for the first six months of 2022 published by the Ministry of Finance shows that the volume of procurement fell down by more than half — from 11.5 trillion rubles (€186 billion) to 5.5 trillion rubles (€89 billion) (-53%). However, in reality, the data on half of the procurement was temporarily unavailable to the government, notes Kommersant.

In value terms, governmental procurement has increased by 17% when compared to the first six months of 2021 (from 4 trillion rubles (€65 billion) to 4.7 trillion rubles (€76 billion), meanwhile the number of contracts has decreased (from 1.7 million to 1.6 million).

The Finance Ministry confirmed to Kommersant that a part of the procurement is being conducted without registering it in the unified information system, thus, the data on that part is missing. The ministry promised to fix the situation and add back the sealed data into the section of the monitoring system unavailable to the public, but only starting from April 2023.