MERX: The Magic Word for Doing Business With The Canadian Public Sector
Could there possibly exist a website that would list government tenders (federal, provincial and municipal) by date of issue and industry category? Where tenders could be narrowed down to just those that pertain to a particular geographic area? That would give all the details of each tender?
Yes, such a website does exist! MERX, the Government of Canada's electronic tendering service, will do all this and more.
Here's some information from their website:
"MERX is the most complete source of
available in Canada. MERX has levelled the playing field so that businesses of any size can have easy and affordable access to billions of dollars in contracting opportunities with the Government of Canada (GC), participating provincial and municipal governments, the U.S. Government, state and local governments, and the private sector."
Much of the site can be accessed for free, as the Government of Canada does not charge fees for basic access to its tenders. Other parts of the site are available for a small charge.
MERX does not list all government tenders, however. How does MERX fit into the overall procurement process of the Canadian Government? Here is an excerpt from the The Government Electronic Tendering Service (GETS) web page of the Contracts Canada website. It explains:
"GETS is an on-line system that advertises government contracting opportunities to potential bidders. GETS is operated by Mediagrif Interactive Technologies Inc. as MERX which provides the service to the federal government under contract.
Departments must use MERX for requirements subject to any of the trade agreements. Some are using it as well for other purchases. PWGSC also uses MERX to advertise requirements for printing services estimated at $10,000 or above, most goods and services estimated at $25,000 or above. It advertises requirements estimated at $100,000 or above for construction and leasing. It also advertises requirements estimated at $76,600 or above for architectural and engineering consulting and services related to real property.
More and more of the Government of Canada's requirements are advertised on MERX annually."
For more information, check out How the Government Buys Goods and Services.
2 thoughts on “MERX: The Magic Word for Doing Business With The Canadian Public Sector”
Not enough people understand that there is so much money to be made by understanding and learning how to use Merx
We have many Canadian customers and this information could potentially be very valuable to many of them, thus I will be posting a link to your page in a future post to our business blog. thanks for bringing this to everyone’s attention!