Competitiveness of Social Enterprises in Slovakia: The Struggle for Contracts in Public Procurement

This paper examines public procurement contracts on the e-contracting portal (EKS) in Slovakia from September 2014 to January 2023, analysing 160,387 contracts. Social enterprises participated in 1,642 bids, representing 0.44% of unique bidders, with a notable success rate of 33.13% for contracts they contested. Financial allocations to social enterprises remained below 1% across all reviewed periods. The analysis reveals that social enterprises primarily engage in service-oriented contracts, while commercial suppliers focus on specialized goods. Using machine learning methods and logistic regression, the key determinants of success for social enterprises are identified. They include the number of bidders and submitted bids, bid type, and short-term bank loan value. These findings provide insights into the role of social enterprises in public procurement and inform strategies to enhance their participation.