The system for making public purchases in Peru adopted blockchain technology in April 2019. Perú Compras uses the LAC-Chain blockchain of the Inter-American Development Bank.
In April 2019, the agency for the management of electronic public purchases “Perú Compras” implemented blockchain technology in its system. Since then, it has registered a total of 154,400 purchase orders.
The information, which appeared on the Perú Compras portal in recent days, adds that the amount purchased through the platform to date amounts to 1,540 million Peruvian soles (PEN) (equivalent to around USD 400 million).
According to the official website, the purchasing center is attached to the Ministry of Economy and Finance of Peru and emerged in 2008. The system became operational in 2016, and they decided to implement blockchain technology on April 15th, 2019. On that date, it began to register the purchase orders of the electronic catalogs using this technology, to optimize the processes to make public purchases nationwide.
Perú Compras serves as a mediator between suppliers and traders in the Andean country, where buyers make a request and sellers make offers in a bidding system. In this way, the agency uses the blockchain to register the winning order and avoid alterations in any part of the process, from the signing of the contract between the parties to the delivery by the supplier.
The orders and their respective offers are registered on multiple servers (nodes) to ensure the inalterability of the information, according to the publication from the agency. “Each purchase order has a QR code that can be read by any smartphone, where the user accesses the original PDF file of the said order, thus verifying the authenticity of the document.”
Perú Compras Operates with IDB’s Support
The Perú Compras system runs on the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) LAC-Chain blockchain testnet, based on ConsenSys Quorum. The IDB launched this ledger in October 2018 to purpose promote the development of the blockchain ecosystem in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The testing program with Perú Compras has the participation of the Peruvian startup Stamping.io, a platform that uses different public or permissioned blockchains to certify the traceability of goods.
At the time of initiating the tests, the founder of Stamping.io, José Zárate, commented that although they provide access to other public blockchains such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin, Perú Compras agreed to test the IDB network as a pilot.
The implementation of blockchain on Perú Compras is not the first case of the use of this technology that receives support from the international organization. Last February, the Mivivienda Fund, an entity attached to the Ministry of Housing of Peru, used LAC-Chain to register and certify the issuance of bonds for housing financing.
The IDB is also working with blockchain startup ChromaWay and Bolivian IT services company Jalasoft to test the blockchain in the land registry in Bolivia, Peru, and Paraguay. The goal is to extend the tests to other parts of South America.
By Alexander Salazar
