For the past few years it has been dawning on governments, local authorities, and the EU that there is more than one way to measure value for money in public contracts.

More efficient budgeting and auditing appears to have delivered more bang for the taxpayer buck but it has also driven public bodies towards a convenient assumption that bigger is better. Big parcels of contracts can be easily hoovered up by big companies, making (in theory) big savings.

In Scotland, the modernisation of the procurement system, combined with the orthodoxies of EU-controlled tendering, created a new transparency and accountability. But it also spawned a "one-size-fits-all" approach that handed a competitive advantage to big, non-Scottish companies over smaller local firms.

The result is a £10 billion-a-year spending engine business groups believe is generating far too little of its economic value within Scotland. Firms with fewer than 250 employees, which account for 99 per cent of businesses and 55 per cent of employment in Scotland, are said by the Scottish Government to win 46 per cent of contracts by value. But the really small firms that make up 94 per cent of the business population and provide almost 30 per cent of jobs win only four per cent.

Of the £4bn spent by Scottish councils in 2012-13, only 27 per cent was spent with businesses within their own areas, even lower than the UK-wide figure of 31 per cent. The Federation of Small Businesses says that, if every council spent an extra five per cent of its budget locally and committed just three per cent more to local firms, it would generate an extra £788 million a year in local economies.

The Herald's SME-SOS campaign has highlighted how Scottish councils such as Borders are beginning to use procurement more imaginatively to boost the local economy. There is also a new European directive on tendering that encourages public bodies to consider economic advantage as well as cost-savings when procuring goods and services. There is a widespread business view that other EU countries already do this.

The success of the Scottish Government's online public procurement portal, in doubling the number of contract awards in two years to 12,000, is correctly highlighted by Finance Secretary John Swinney. He says Scotland is setting an international benchmark in procurement. But lacking in the Scottish Government's pronouncements this year is the note sounded in 2011 by the then minister in charge Alex Neil. He said the argument should be taken to Europe on economic impact being taken into consideration, not just the price, in awarding any contract.

The Confederation of British Industry has added its weight to the push by calling for a full review of public sector procurement as part of a strategy to revitalise the supply chain and create 500,000 UK jobs. It backs the idea that "public procurement decisions cannot be based purely on narrow definitions of value for money, but must take into account their wider impact, on society, communities and the economy". We agree.