A new transparency report says bad procurement deals have cost the Russian government 9.4 billion dollars in the past three years

Bad procurement orders cost the Russian government 557 billion rubles ($9.4 billion) over the past three years, says a new transparency report, according to the newspaper Vedomosti. The amount of money lost in inefficient state purchases is equal to federal spending on education and healthcare.

The report’s authors found that the growth of electronic auctions in procurement orders in the first half of 2017 cut the state’s losses by a third (from an average of 180 billion rubles to 120 billion rubles).

The study found that the most transparent procurement orders in the government are carried out by the Federal Press Agency, State Courier Service, the federal media regulator Roskomnadzor, and the Defense Ministry, whose tenders are apparently “guaranteed to be transparent.”

The least transparent procurement orders reportedly belong to the Federal Road Agency, Federal Fishery Agency, and Federal Subsoil Management Agency.