The mandatory use of the National Public Procurement Portal (PNCP) to publish public procurement data for all municipal, state and federal entities represents an advance in the centralization of information. However, Transparência Brasil detected limitations in accessing and using the platform’s data during the task of identifying drug purchases and analyzing the price of the items contracted.

This analysis describes the challenges encountered, such as the impossibility of downloading data in bulk, restrictions on the APIs made available and the pulverization of the data of a contract in multiple files or endpoints, which makes it difficult to get an overview of the purchasing process. These obstacles jeopardize the use of the PNCP for different groups, from public managers to ordinary citizens who want to monitor the procurement of medicines.