Bawumia pays surprise visit to Procurement Authority

The Vice President, Alhaji Dr Mahamadu Bawumia paid a surprise visit to the Public Procurement Authority on Thursday to familiarise himself with the Authority’s operations.

Dr. Bawumia explained that, the visit was borne out of government’s desire to chart a new course and tackle challenges facing the Authority.

“If you look at corruption in the sector, I say  probably 95 per cent plus of it is from procurement, and so we are trying to give the public procurement authority as much as we can to execute its mandate. The Chief Executive has basically made it clear that he wants to chart a new course which is what we want to support,” he explained.

The Vice President said the Authority, under the NPP administration, will ensure due diligence and value for money in every procurement.

“For every procurement, there is going to be due diligence and value for money. This is new and a new team is going to be set up here to do this.We want to bring in a lot of transparency in the procurement process, but we want to bring in technology and so we are moving towards  E-procurement.”

“Chief Executive has already said that starting in June, we are going to begin the process, which means that every procurement will have its identification number and you can track it from each stage to the end so it is going to be very transparent…There will not be any surprises.”

The NPP administration has for the first time appointed a Minister of state in charge of public procurement. Member of Parliament for Dome Kwabenya, and Deputy Majority Leader, Adwoa Sarfo, who’s  a professional lawyer with specialization in Procurement Law, is the Minister for that unit.