Public sector procurement: spend analysis 2022 to 2023

Scottish Public Sector Procurement Spend 2022 to 2023

This report has been produced to meet a commitment by the Scottish Procurement and Property Directorate of the Scottish Government to provide a publicly accessible graphical depiction of Scottish Public Sector procurement spend. This report provides a summary of 108 Scottish public bodies’ procurement spend during the 2022 to 2023 reporting year which is broken down by sector, supplier size, geographic region and top 10 business categories.

Data for all charts and maps in this document has been taken from the Scottish Procurement Information Hub (the Hub) based on the Accounts Payable data from 108 participating Scottish public sector bodies. Data has been verified at February 2025 to align with the Procurement Activity – annual report 2022-2023 (Procurement activity: annual report 2022 to 2023 - gov.scot). Information on the Hub relates to known procurement spend with suppliers that were classed as commercial organisations or as non-trade social care providers, and with whom individual public bodies spent £1,000 or more in aggregate spend FY 2022-2023.

As per the Procurement Activity annual report, the financial year of 2022 to 2023 saw several pressures placed on the Scottish economy, from issues relating to the global supply of consumer goods and within the supply chain. However, a key theme which is evidenced below is the Scottish public sector continues to spend the largest share of spend within Scotland and with Scottish based suppliers. This report includes spend with Scottish based Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) which continues to be high. To demonstrate spend across Scotland, this report provides visual representation highlighting spend within each Scottish local authority and total supplier numbers used within each local authority.

The spend report also provides a breakdown of spend per commodity category for each of the four subsectors (NHS, Higher and Further Education, Local Authorities and Central Government organisations (including core Scottish Government)), however it is important to note commodity categories are based on the supplier’s main area of business, noted in public sources used for data cleansing for example companies house, and not the goods and services purchased by the buying organisation.