23 August 2026, 16:53
In the Odessa Department of Education, one bidder won 23 out of 24 tenders
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PHOTO: Collage by Intent
At the Department of Education and Science of the Odesa City Council, 23 out of 24 completed procurements had only one bidder. This accounts for 95.8% of all completed lots in the 2026 sample.
These figures were provided by the Center for Public Investigations, which analyzed 434 procurement procedures conducted by education offices and departments in Odesa, Mykolaiv, and Kherson.
In Odesa, the sample included 25 lots from the City Council’s Department of Education and Science with a total estimated value of 5.9 million hryvnias. Of these, 24 procurements totaling 1.9 million hryvnias had already been completed, while one more, worth 4 million hryvnias, remained active.
This procurement involved children’s trips to camps and health resorts in the Lviv region. The Center for Policy Research notes that organizing vacations for Odesa schoolchildren outside the region is consistent with the practice of relocating children’s health programs deeper into the country due to the war.
Among the completed procurements, 95.8% had only one participant. This is the highest rate of sole-bid wins among Odesa, Mykolaiv, and Kherson, although the smallest number of lots was examined in Odesa.
The largest recipients of funds among the completed procurements were the municipal enterprise “Odessa City Heat Supply”—577,900 hryvnias, PJSC “Odesaoblenergo” — 447,800 hryvnias across two lots, and PJSC “Ukrtelecom” — 190,600 hryvnias. Together, they received 62.6% of the total value of completed procurements.
Separately, the authors of the analysis drew attention to procurements related to financial accounting software. Sole proprietor Olena Shust won three separate lots in a single day, which involved the supply of the software, its technical support, and work with software products. The total cost of these procurements exceeded 87,000 hryvnias.
The Center for Policy and Reform notes that, formally, these were three different procurement items. At the same time, conducting them all on the same day in favor of a single entrepreneur appears to be a case of splitting services that are similar in nature into separate lots. However, the authors of the analysis do not claim that this constituted a violation: within the sample of these procurements, no disqualifications or monitoring issues were recorded, and only one complaint was filed.
