AIU — Administración, Imprevistos y Utilidad (Colombia)

AIU is a single percentage covering the contractor's overhead, contingency and profit, applied on top of direct costs. There is no equivalent line item in English-language contracting, and there is no statutory definition of it in Colombian procurement law either — but it appears in works budgets, in framework orders and, decisively, in the tax code.

What the three letters mean

AIU stands for Administración, Imprevistos y Utilidad: administration, contingencies and profit. It is expressed as a percentage, and it is applied to the direct costs of the work to produce the contract value.

Colombia Compra Eficiente's glossary defines it in the framework-order context as "the value the Supplier allocates to cover the administration, contingency and profit costs proper to the performance of the Purchase Order, expressed as a percentage".

There is no equivalent single concept in English-language procurement. The nearest description is overhead plus contingency plus margin, bundled into one declared uplift — but bundled is the operative word. In a Colombian works budget, the direct costs are itemised and the contractor's entire indirect cost and profit are collapsed into one negotiated figure.

This is not an oversight you should work around; it is the state of the law, and Colombia Compra Eficiente says so itself. In a published concepto responding to a consultation on whether taxes belong inside the AIU, the agency recorded that "there is no legal definition of the concept of AIU in public procurement", and that the AIU is a contractual stipulation which may be agreed under the parties' freedom of contract.

What fills the gap is case law. The same concepto quotes the Consejo de Estado's definition: AIU is the indirect costs, calculated as a percentage of direct costs, intended to cover (i) administration — site management costs, office administration and the like; (ii) contingencies — a percentage set aside for costs that arise and were not foreseen; and (iii) profit, being the contractor's remuneration proper for its work. The agency cites Sección Tercera, Subsección B, radicado 16371, 29 February 2012.

Two things follow from a doctrine-based rather than statute-based concept. First, the composition of AIU is negotiable and varies by entity and by sector. Second, when a dispute arises over what a given AIU covered, you are arguing about the contract and the jurisprudence, not about an article number.

Where it becomes compulsory: tax

The one place AIU is fixed by statute is the Estatuto Tributario. Article 462-1, as replaced by article 46 of Ley 1607 de 2012, establishes a special taxable base for a defined set of services: integrated cleaning and catering services; security services authorised by the Superintendencia de Vigilancia Privada; temporary staffing services provided by firms authorised by the Ministry of Labour; services provided by associated-work cooperatives and pre-cooperatives as regards labour; and services provided by unions under registered union contracts. For those services, the tax applies to the part corresponding to the AIU — and that AIU "may not be less than ten per cent (10%) of the contract value".

The article also requires the taxpayer to have complied with all labour, compensation and social-security obligations to use the special base.

Two paragraphs extend it. The paragraph as amended by article 182 of Ley 1819 de 2016 applies the same special base to the Impuesto de Industria y Comercio, to withholding at source for income tax and for ICA, and to other territorial taxes, fees and contributions. A second paragraph added by article 75 of Ley 2277 de 2022 moves the transport of valuables from excluded to taxed, on the same footing.

For a bidder in cleaning, catering, security, temporary staffing or valuables transport, the practical rule is that the tax base is your AIU, and a floor of 10% of the contract value applies whatever percentage you actually declared.

What to do about it

Quote AIU as a discrete percentage and state what it covers. Where the entity's model puts taxes inside the A component, that is permissible — Colombia Compra Eficiente's concepto confirms that each entity is free to structure its financial model to include taxes in the price, inside the AIU, or elsewhere — but you must be able to show which. Do not leave it ambiguous in the offer.

Check the sector before you price. If your service is in the article 462-1 list, an AIU below 10% does not reduce your tax; it only reduces your margin, because the base is floored regardless.

Read the pliego's own treatment. Because there is no statutory definition, the pliego and the Documentos Tipo — where a standard document governs the category — decide whether AIU is fixed by the entity, offered by the bidder, scored, or excluded from price comparison. Do not assume that a percentage that worked on one contract carries to the next.

And on framework orders in the Tienda Virtual, check how AIU interacts with the catalogue price before you accept an order: the glossary definition ties AIU to the performance of the purchase order, and the framework's own rules govern how it is applied.

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