The headline numbers
July to September is the first quarter of Pakistan's financial year, and it showed. We recorded 10,808 tender notices in the quarter, up from 9,423 in April to June, issued by 4,299 different organisations. That is well over a hundred new notices for every working day.
The quarter started strong, dipped in August, then picked up sharply. September was the busiest month at 4,285 notices, as departments that received their new allocations in July moved from planning into buying. August was the quietest of the three, which is common for a month with a national holiday in the middle of it.
One caution before reading too much into the quarter-on-quarter rise. PakistanTender added sources during the period, including more newspapers and provincial portals, so part of the increase is our coverage getting wider rather than the market growing. The shares and patterns below are more reliable than the raw growth figure.
Where the work is: Punjab still leads, Federal and Sindh catch up
Punjab issued 5,175 notices, close to half of everything we recorded. That is not surprising given the number of districts, development authorities and state companies based there, but its share dropped slightly from the previous quarter.
The bigger story is Federal and Sindh. Federal buyers issued 2,113 notices, up by about a third on Q2, and Sindh rose by a similar margin to 2,062. For suppliers in Karachi and Islamabad, that meant more work close to home than at any point since we started tracking.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa went the other way, falling to 1,033 notices from 1,186. Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan and AJK together made up under 4% of the total. Treat those smaller numbers with care: these regions rely heavily on newspaper advertising, which is the hardest source to capture in full.
What's being bought: the new budget shows up in supplies
Renovation stayed on top for a second quarter with 1,008 notices. Repair and maintenance of existing buildings is the steadiest work in Pakistani procurement, and it does not depend much on the budget cycle.
The clearest budget effect was in supplies. General order notices rose to 653 from 382, and stationery nearly tripled to 468. These are the purchases offices make once their new year's allocations are released, and they arrive in a rush in the first quarter.
Medicines climbed to 339 notices as hospitals placed their annual drug orders, and transmission line work almost doubled to 319, driven by the power distribution companies. Building construction moved the other way, falling to 264 from 581. Big works contracts tend to be advertised at the end of a financial year to lock in funds, and fewer were left to tender by July.
Who's buying: state companies dominate the top ten
The largest single buyers were not government departments. Pakistan State Oil issued 247 notices and SNGPL 228, well ahead of anyone else. MEPCO and IESCO, two of the power distribution companies, were both in the top five.
The rest of the list is a useful reminder of how varied public buying is: a university (IBA Karachi), the Navy's procurement directorate, two banks and a defence manufacturer. None of these buyers relies on e-PADS alone, which is why suppliers who only watch the federal portal tend to miss them.
How long you get to bid
The median tender gave bidders 16 days from publication to closing, one day more than in Q2. But 37% closed within 14 days, and about 3% gave a week or less.
In practice, two weeks is not long. It has to cover buying the documents, a site visit or pre-bid meeting, arranging a bid security from the bank and getting signatures and attestations. Firms that find a notice a week after it was published are already working with half the time.
Where notices are published
This is the first quarter in which we can break down sources properly, and the result surprises most people. Fewer than half of the notices we recorded came from the official portals. Buyers' own websites accounted for 5,022, nearly half the total. e-PADS and the federal PPRA site carried 2,760, the four provincial portals 2,033 and newspapers 678.
The practical point is simple. If you only check e-PADS, you see about a quarter of the market.
What to watch in Q4
October to December is usually steadier than the first quarter. Works tenders usually pick back up as development schemes approved in the budget reach the tendering stage, and winter procurement for heating, uniforms and maintenance tends to arrive before the end of the calendar year. Supplies should settle back down now that the start-of-year rush is over.