From 1998 to 2008 its procurement grew by 61% while its staff numbers went up by just 20%.
Despite this slowing, web-based procurement is growing at an impressive clip.
Reverse auctions in logistics and procurement have grown dramatically since the advent of widespread Internet usage in the late 1990s.
He said the country had gained formidable procurement capabilities through growing commercial ties between its state-run trading companies and private Chinese companies.
One obvious area is procurement, where a growing number of firms are starting to "squeeze their suppliers a second time", after realising that the first round of renegotiations following the financial crisis did not go far enough.
While supply-side policies such as R&D subsidies and tax credits have been both extensively discussed in the literature and empirically investigated, the analysis of innovative public procurement is a growing trend in the literature, which still lacks robust empirical evidence.
Developing countries are concerned that American efforts to condition free-trade agreements on labour standards are designed to push up their costs.Tension over government-procurement policies is growing.
More recently, though, China has ordered as many as 40 advanced Sukhoi-30 fighters from Russia as part of a steadily growing arms procurement program intended to give China an edge over Taiwan.
But the procurement budget did not grow as much as many military officers and military contracts had hoped, largely because of sharply rising costs for entitlement programs and maintenance operations.
Described by Sheth as "an Enterprise product offering services for procurement and management," Elance grew and grew, becoming the 'Craigslist' (except not as dodgy) for outsourced employees, software development and virtually everything a small (or big) business might need.
