Abstract

Verifying a contractor’s economic and financial credibility is a way for contracting authorities to obtain information on whether a contractor has sufficient financial and economic resources to guarantee the proper and continuous performance of the contract. The legislator has given the contracting authorities the possibility to verify contractors in several ways, but in practice the contracting authorities either fail to impose economic and financial conditions, or they only examine the current ability of the contractor to perform the contract, giving more importance to the contractor’s professional experience, technical and personnel potential than to its economic and financial credibility.
Few contracting authorities are interested in assessing the profitability of the contractor’s business in the long term, including its ability to repay debts or the level of return on equity.
Setting economic and financial conditions also raises difficulties at the verification stage. Nevertheless, at present, it is the financial and economic credibility of the contractor that increases the guarantee of an uninterrupted contract performance.