From the data · story 1

Armenia cut single-source contracts from 52 percent of spend to 7. The habit stayed.

We indexed 236,159 signed contracts from PPCM, the public contracts module of Armenia's procurement portal armeps.am, and classified every award by its legal procedure form. By value, non-competitive awards collapsed. By count, roughly four procedures in ten are still awarded without competition.

By Soso Pkhakadze · published 2 Sep 2026 · registry index of 29 Aug 2026 · aggregate only, companies only

The headline

The money moved to tenders. The count did not follow.

share of contract valueshare of procedure count
60%40%20%0% 52.0%6.8% 20182020202220242026
Single-source awards in Armenian public procurement, share of all PPCM contracts. 2026 covers signatures to 29 Aug. Table 1 in the repo gives both denominators; restricted to procurement procedures only, the count share is 42.75 percent in 2018 and 40.56 percent in 2026.

Between 2018 and August 2026 the registry records 214,244 contracts worth 4,547,341,742,554 AMD. Of that, 70,606 contracts (32.96 percent) worth 980,736,051,708 AMD (21.57 percent) were awarded under PPCM's two single-source procedure forms, ՄԱ and ՀՄԱ. The value share fell from 52.04 percent in 2018 to 6.83 percent in 2024, then ticked back up to 12.54 percent in 2026 to date.

One buyer signs almost half of all single-source money. The Ministry of Health awarded 486,685,298,874 AMD without competition across 6,788 contracts: 70.04 percent of everything it spent through PPCM and 47.12 percent of all single-source value in the registry. The top 5 buyers hold 72.11 percent of it, the top 30 hold 95.02 percent.

The biggest single-source suppliers are the state's own companies and hospitals. Public Television of Armenia, Electric Networks of Armenia, HayPost and Gazprom Armenia lead the list; 11 of the top 30 are hospitals or medical institutions paid by the Ministry of Health. The top 30 together account for 44.74 percent of all single-source value.

1,017 companies live on one state buyer. Among companies with at least 10 contracts, 1,017 get more than 90 percent of their public revenue from a single buyer, 1,663,049,779,650 AMD in total; 578 of them have exactly one buyer ever. 430 depend on the Ministry of Health, 19 road and construction contractors on the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure. Dependence is not the same as favoritism: 222 of the 1,017 won all of it competitively, while 210 got at least 90 percent of it single-source.

Corrected on 13 September 2026: the published table had included 63 private individuals whose personal document numbers the registry records in its tax ID field. They were removed, identifiers that are not Armenian tax IDs were cleared, and the figures here were recomputed.

Appeals are almost extinct in the record. 651 of 214,244 contracts (0.30 percent) carry an appeal narrative: 142 in 2018, 24 in 2023, 18 in the first eight months of 2026.

The tables

Year by year, buyer by buyer

Single-source share of Armenian public contracts by year
YearShare of valueShare of count
201852.04%41.81%
201949.00%38.64%
202047.13%43.58%
202121.00%30.48%
202225.74%32.39%
202321.41%34.91%
20246.83%26.07%
20259.21%28.78%
2026*12.54%30.27%

* to 29 Aug. Denominator: all PPCM contracts. Excluding non-procurement expenses and grant competitions, single-source is 41.83 percent of procedures and 24.54 percent of value over the whole window. Full table with both denominators: 1-single-source-by-year.csv.

Top 10 buyers by single-source value, 2018 to 2026
BuyerSingle-source AMDShare of own spend
Ministry of Health486,685,298,87470.04%
Ministry of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure84,279,806,23511.75%
Administration of the Council of Public Broadcaster61,824,011,07597.13%
Ministry of Defense60,121,566,35320.47%
Ministry of Internal Affairs51,906,541,08131.70%
Yerevan Municipality21,892,054,7308.22%
Urban Development Committee17,221,781,0513.66%
Armenian Nuclear Power Plant17,076,141,75018.14%
State Revenue Committee14,838,050,00911.58%
Ministry of High-Tech Industry14,746,677,77612.91%

Top 30 with tax IDs: 3-top30-buyers-single-source.csv.

Top 10 suppliers by single-source value, companies only
SupplierSingle-source AMD
Public Television of Armenia52,880,444,997
Electric Networks of Armenia45,357,101,423
HayPost29,289,653,502
Erebuni Medical Center24,980,777,925
Gazprom Armenia24,215,228,500
Arabkir Medical Complex19,848,223,700
Karavan-11 LLC18,175,162,169
Natali Pharm18,165,117,283
St. Gregory the Illuminator Medical Center16,966,790,715
A.A.B. Project LLC15,246,606,537

Electric Networks of Armenia sold single-source to 78 different buyers, HayPost to 80: utilities every state body buys from without a tender. Full list of 30 with tax IDs, buyer counts and date ranges: 2-top30-suppliers-single-source.csv.

Contracts carrying an appeal narrative
201820192020202120222023202420252026*
Appeals142114103787424475118

0.95 percent of 2018 contracts, 0.08 percent in 2023 and in 2026 to date. The appeal field is free text typed by the buyer, so this count is a floor; the classification rule is in the method notes below and in 5-appeals-by-year.csv.

Method and caveats

What was counted, and what the data cannot say

Reproduce it

The data and the pipeline are open

Five CSV tables, the run metadata and the one-file pipeline. node analyze.mjs streams the weekly index and rebuilds every number on this page.