LuxIA’s database holds nearly 1.8 million procurement records published on SECOP II over the last 12 months. Grouping them by method produces a result that surprises anyone taught that the state’s general rule is open tender: the country’s most used method is “special regime contracting,” with 882,282 procurement records — 49.5% of the total. Adding its “with offers” variant (10,460 more records), exactly half of the contracting activity visible on SECOP II takes place outside the General Procurement Statute.
Second place is not competitive either: direct contracting adds up to 727,322 procurement records (40.8%). The genuinely competitive methods described in the textbooks — minimum-amount procurement (59,836 records, 3.4%), abbreviated selection for lesser amounts (33,076, 1.9%), reverse auction (15,672, 0.9%) — together account for less than 7% of the universe. The classic open tender, which the public imagination associates with “how the state contracts,” is statistically marginal next to the special regime and direct contracting.
What is the special regime? It is not a method of the General Statute (Law 80 of 1993 and Law 1150 of 2007), but the label SECOP II uses to record the procurement of entities exempted from that statute: state social enterprises in the health sector, public universities, state-owned industrial and commercial enterprises and mixed-economy companies that compete in the market, household public utility companies, and the Banco de la República, among others. These entities contract under private law and under their own procurement manuals, which each of them issues.
It is worth saying plainly: contracting under the special regime is not illegal, nor is it in itself an indication of corruption. Lawmakers exempted those entities because they compete in markets where a tender procedure would put them at a disadvantage. But the exception is not a blank cheque: article 13 of Law 1150 of 2007 requires exempted entities to apply, in any case, the principles of administrative function and fiscal management (articles 209 and 267 of the Constitution), and they remain subject to the regime of disqualifications and incompatibilities.
The practical problem is oversight. With an open tender, citizens know the stages, deadlines and remedies because they are the same across the entire state. With the special regime there are as many sets of rules as there are entities: to monitor a state health enterprise you have to read its manual; to monitor a university, its own. Publicity on SECOP II does exist — that is why these records appear in our database — but with less structured detail than a tender: fewer milestones, fewer standardised documents, fewer automatic signals.
If you do citizen oversight, three concrete moves: first, request the entity’s procurement manual — it is a public document and should be on its website; it is against that manual, not against Law 80, that you assess whether a procurement record skipped the rules. Second, verify that the entity publishes on SECOP II in a timely manner: External Circular 1 of 2019 from Colombia Compra Eficiente requires publicity from special-regime entities too. Third, remember that disqualifications and fiscal control apply just the same: a disqualified contractor does not become eligible because the entity is exempted.
If you are a supplier, the figure reads differently: half of the state market moves under more agile rules and recurring purchases — health, universities, utilities. Getting into those entities’ supplier databases and monitoring their invitations is worth as much as chasing open tenders.
In LuxIA you can filter any procurement search by method — including the special regime — see which method dominates in each entity from its Entity Profile, and configure your opportunity radar so that it also alerts you to these records. LuxIA’s indicators are statistical and do not constitute a legal opinion; the primary and authoritative source is always SECOP II.