When a Company decides to buy new/additional Assets (HW/SW), how often is the Vendor "pre-chosen"?

The part of the world where I work and live in, I would say this happens "too often". Here in Saudi Arabia the way private/public sector and government agencies work are quite different in terms of selecting their vendors. For example, in government organizations if the project budget is less than a million SAR (i.e. about USD 267,000) the project will not be out for bidding process and will be given to the vendor who finds out about the project and proposes the required solution at acceptable price and not much is cared about how acceptable the project delivery will be. Where as projects worth more than a million would be open for bidding where companies will purchase RFPs from the agency and submit their proposals. Now here's the fancy part, after submitting the proposals, an official from the govt. agency will first open financial proposals and then select 3 companies with lowest price, then the technical proposals of only those 3 companies will be evaluated.

So you can imagine how "pre-chosen" the vendors are when comes to buying new or additional assets here in Saudi Arabia.