Costa Rica ICT regulator criticizes direct contracting with state companies

Costa Rica's telecoms regulator Sutel warned that an exception included in the administrative contracting law favors state operators over private ones when selling ICT services to the public sector.

According to a Sutel investigation, 43% of public telecoms services were contracted directly to state operators between 2016 and 2020.

During the same period, 18 operators have been awarded some 208 public telecoms services contracts. Direct contracting represented 80% of the total. Of this total, contractual activity by public law entities was the most used mechanism with 46%.

In the last five years, direct contracting for over 7bn colones (US$41.9mn) was carried out, an average of 74% of the amounts awarded by the State in that period.

Sutel said the public sector purchasing segment represents around 10% of total telecom sector revenues.