It is a town hall which seeks to redo a road system, another which wants to do prospecting on the risks of landslides or the development of football pitches. These are all public tenders published by the regional daily press (PQR), of which Le Parisien is a part, alongside its pages of legal announcements. An Ifop poll commissioned by the GIE de la PQR questions the government’s choice to transfer these legal announcements to a single digital platform which, in addition to depriving newspapers of revenue, could prove counterproductive.
“We wanted to measure in complete transparency the impact of the regional daily press on its territory, explains Pierre-Yves Etlin, president of the GIE de la PQR. And in particular to measure our impact in terms of savings, in particular on the relationship between public authorities and companies concerning public contracts. The government’s plan to centralize public procurement on a platform suggests that the PQR would lose the possibility of publishing public procurement tenders, which represents 5 to 6% of its advertising revenue, according to Pierre-Yves Etlin.
According to this survey, carried out among elected officials and business leaders, the press federates this population. 69% of elected officials and 44% of business leaders frequently consult a regional daily press title. 85% of construction company managers, whose activity is associated with public markets, consult these titles at least once a week, compared to 75% for all companies. “These companies need us to go to them, via the PQR, rather than setting up a platform on the Internet”, deciphers Pierre-Yves Etlin. And to recall that the PQR has already launched its own platform, France Marchés, on which all the public contracts of the local authorities are already published.
A useful press to “identify opportunities”
Among the pages consulted in the PQR, those of the legal announcements are particularly consulted, both by elected officials and business leaders. They consider the regional daily press useful for “identifying local development opportunities” at 63% and 66% respectively. And 66% of elected officials and 53% of business leaders consider that PQR titles are the “most legitimate” actors for publicizing public markets due to their local roots.
According to this Ifop survey, a common and decentralized platform… so it’s niet. Elected officials fear, for their part, an increase in unsuccessful public contracts (lack of candidates), deploring a lack of local contacts (76%) and fear not being able to master a new platform. On the business side, nearly one in two are concerned, in the case of such a platform, of the difficulties in identifying public contracts and of being put in competition with larger companies, national or European in by publishing such announcements on a wider scale.