Norway – Financial market operational services – Intention notice to enter into an ongoing service contract with Macrobond

The Ministry of Finance intends to enter into an ongoing service contract with Macrobond for continued use of their data and software for macroeconomic analysis. The Ministry of Finance is holding the procurement without a competition as the procurement concerns services that only a specific tenderer can deliver because competition is impossible for technical reasons, cf. the Procurement Regulations § 13-4 (1) b no. 2. Software from Macrobond is used for searches, downloading, transformation and analysis of data and economic statistics, as well as storage, visualisation and distribution of the data and analyses. Macrobond's software and data is used as an integrated system for analyses in spreadsheets, notes, presentations and various tools for economic modelling. The scope of the procurement is estimated to NOK 650,000 excluding VAT per annum, NOK 2.6 million over four years. The Ministry of Finance utilises large amounts of economic statistics and market data for ongoing monitoring and analysis of Norwegian and international economy. Over many years efficient and quality assured solutions and processes have been built up for macroeconomic analyses, based on statistics and data delivered through the macrobond software. The systems use mechanisms for analysing, visualising, data storage and distributing analyses that are unique to Macrobond ́s products, and which require specific "know-looking" to utilise. The scope of data and macroeconomic analyses used through Macrobond's software is very large, and adapting the processes to software and data from another supplier will lead to very high cost of switching. The costs of a supplier exchange are estimated so high that the Procurement Act's objective of effective use of society's resources means that there is no competition for a new supplier for data for macroeconomic analyses, cf. the Procurement Regulations § 13-4 (1) b no. 2, c.f. the Procurement Act § 1-1. The contracting authority intends to enter into a contract with Macrobond 16.04.24. Any objections are to be sent to the Ministry of Finance via the Mercell portal within 10 days of this notice.