Conservatively these IFI-Funded Pubic Sector markets are worth over €1 Trillion per annum with over 200,000 tenders per day. The Funds are typically earmarked for emerging economies in Africa, Asia, Middle East, Caribbean and South America, but there is often related work awarded for delivery in the major IFI centres in Brussels, London, Geneva and Washington. The funded projects are more ‘commercial’ and of greater monetary value than those R&D programmes that are heavily promoted in Ireland, such as EC Horizon 2020 – a programme that represents less than 8% of the EC annual budget and of interest generally only to multinational, universities and specialist R&D firms.

The IFI lists for the various countries do show that SMEs are active in these developing markets and typically represent 75-80% of the active bidding organisations.

These funded projects are well within the capabilities of Irish organisations be they small or large, private firms, public bodies, universities, NGOs or specialist R&D entities. Interestingly there are many Irish individuals working in these markets – but for UK, French, German Spanish or US firms.

For example Denmark, a country with many similarities to Ireland in terms of population and its concentration on key sectors such as Agriculture and Rural Development, Energy and ICT, continues to wins over ten times Ireland’s IFI- funded trade business. Their return from follow on or ‘downstream’ business is significantly more.

During the recent Euro financial crisis, that other troubled economies such as Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy reported increased IFI activity on international projects.

While the major IFI projects have been available to Irish firms for some time now, the recent BREXIT vote will significantly increase EC-funded opportunities for any interested Irish organisation. funders. With an annual budget spend of €140bn per annum, the EC is one of the major global funders today.

The UK is particularly strong in key sectors such as Agriculture and Rural Development, Education, Finance, Infrastructure, Security and Trade. That is probably because a majority of the international tenders are in English and importantly there is significant support, financial and otherwise, available from UK Government. This support relies heavily on their international networks and pro-active trade departments attached to their Foreign Embassies.

In Ireland, we lack that engagement in key sectors. For example, we have no representative on a selected list of 60 organisations for the EC External Aid Framework on Agriculture and Rural Development.

BREXIT will change that dynamic and some 4,200 plus UK organisations (Fig. 1) we are able to identify, will no longer be able to bid on future EC Funded trade-related opportunities. The question is then who will take up the resultant slack left by the exit of our near neighbour? While the exit date is still some way off, the UK organisations are already preparing for this break and are seeking other non-EC funded opportunities, targeting the UK bi-lateral funds and the other major IFIs. The remaining 27 member states and their organisations have actively commenced the disengagement, by omitting British firms in their new consortia and engaging fewer UK experts.
EC28 Activity Rankings 2017

The BREXIT opportunity is already being discussed by other European Governments and Business Support Agencies. Ireland, its Agencies and interested organisations will need to prepare for this seismic occurrence immediately if we are to exploit these certain opportunities.

In the EC league activity table, Ireland is now ranked in 24th position among the EC28 States having fallen 5 places in the last 5 years.

One of the important features in these fully-funded markets is that payment is secure and advances of up to 60% are available.

The National and Regional public-sector procurement markets within the various EC 28 Member States, present significant opportunities for Irish organisations of all sizes, across all sectors and be they in the Services, Product or Infrastructure business.

The overall value of this market is estimated at over €2.4 Trillion per annum. To date, any Irish successes in these markets are largely attributed to the multinational such as Apple, Facebook or Microsoft – but certainly not our SMEs.

Typically, Irish firms have shied away for bidding on tenders in other EC countries – even though Irish Government projects has proved attractive targets for other nations – with the UK and NI the main beneficiaries.

Why Ireland is targeted by other States may be because our EC partners have more experience in public sector procurement (including tendering with the major IFIs), allied with a good level of proficiency in English.

PUBLIC PROCUREMENT AND CROSS-BORDER TENDERING IN EUROPE – PPACT

ConsultingIreland is part of an EC Funded consortium that is currently reviewing Public Procurement and Cross Border Tendering within the EC Partner States aimed at identifying and providing practical solutions, developing partnership and mentoring interested participants. See out Brochure that explains our objectives, activities and partners in greater detail.

The programme is an 18 months assignment and we have kicked off with our first meeting in Barcelona in Summer 2017. The partners are;

Regional Government of Catalonia, Spain
Paris Chambers, France
Venice Regional Chambers, Italy
Bangor University, Wales
ConsultingIreland, Ireland

Our next meeting is in Bangor, Wales where the consortium will gather to develop a training programme for the partners on ‘best practice’ training and mentoring (‘train the trainers’) that will be delivered to the member of each Partner organisation. For example, Paris Chamber has over 650K members alone

Our other activities will include;

Procurement and Cross-Border tendering for 125 organisations across the 5 partner countries including 50 in Ireland (25 in ROI and 25 in NI). ConsultingIreland will deliver the training to the Irish companies and may also provide support to other Partners who do not have the ‘hands on’ practical experience of our organisation
Development of a tender tracking system and identification of opportunities in EC 28 countries – particularly on ‘Smart Cities’ tenders
Building Consortia and identification of partners in other EC28 countries
Facilitating B2B to build partnerships and consortia
Promotion of Public Procurement and Cross-Border Tendering at major events throughout Europe

Consortia Support

Ireland and Irish organisations need to seek opportunities and alliances to exploit the opportunities in these new markets and by adopting ‘best practice’ positioning ourselves to be more successful in targeting the wider EC marketplace and beyond.