Abstract
This paper presents a comparison of time delays in the awarding of public sector contracts in the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom. The problem of these time delays has not been adequately addressed in the academic literature.
The authors analysed the factors impacting on time delays in each country. A significant portion of GDP, in all countries, is allocated via public procurement.
This paper compares the length of procurement procedures in the Czech Republic and the UK and the reasons for delays. The authors highlight the absence of public policies on procurement in the Czech Republic.
A basic prerequisite for improving the results of public procurement is for all actors in the process to be involved and committed: officials and politicians and the public. We chose to compare the Czech Republic with the UK because the Czech government, after the fall of the communist regime, sought foreign examples of good practice that would be clearly different from anything resembling the previous centralist regime.
They focused on the UK and their reforms. It is interesting and useful to examine the extent to which the Czech Republic managed to import public procurement practices from the UK.
We developed an econometric model for each country which identified statistically significant factors causing time delays and then compared the results for both countries.