Competition

How much spending faces no real competition?

A single-bid award is one where only one supplier bid. It is the world's standard competition-risk indicator - not proof of wrongdoing, but a flag for restrictive specs, thin markets or capture. Here it is across every award with a recorded bid count.

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of awards drew a single bid
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awards with bid counts

Single-bid rate by year

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By value band

Does competition thin out for bigger contracts?

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By sector

Single-bid rate by buyer sector (awards classified from the buying organisation's name).

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States league table

For records on state procurement portals, ranked by single-bid rate. Higher = less competitive.

Data integrity note - we are verifying this against the source.

A few states show implausibly low single-bid rates (e.g. West Bengal below 1%). That almost certainly reflects how that state's portal records the "number of bids" field, not genuine near-total competition. We are cross-checking these against the source portals before drawing conclusions - treat the extreme low end of this table as unverified.

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State vs Central split: