A direct award allows a public sector entity to contract with a supplier of goods and services and accelerates most procedures associated with public contracts. Direct awards are used by many European municipalities and are the subject of much debate. This paper looks at the value of direct awards in Portugal. Employing classification and regression tree (CART) analysis, the author concludes that, in European countries, direct awards are the most efficient solution for small, current expenses; however, larger projects should be subject to public competition.