Procurement authority reviews tender documents
The Public Procurement Authority (PPA) has commenced a review process aimed at ensuring that the contents and demands of Standard Tender Documents (STDs) conform to new developments in the procurement industry worldwide.
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The process would add or delete outmoded clauses in STDs; the documents used by businesses and institutions to tender for contracts, goods and services from the government.
It could also lead to the redesigning of the documents in a bid to make them user-friendly to institutions that relied on them for businesses.
The current STDs were developed in 2003 and the Director of Policy and Strategy at the PPA, Mr Ackotia Sebastian Jerry, said series of concerns raised by the tendering public on their contents and look had necessitated the review.
Consequently, a stakeholders forum was held in Accra to solicit the views and suggestions of the general public, especially those who work closely with the PPA on what should be amended to make the STDs friendly to the general public and the business community.
"There have been many complaints, issues and concerns about the clarity of STDs. There are also new developments in the procurement process and we need to incorporate all these into our STDs," Mr Jerry told the Daily Graphic after the forum.
The review process is part of the Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP) project which was initiated by the PPA in 2010 and supported by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO).
The SECO is supporting the project with US$2.7 million and it will end next year, the PPA's Director of Policy and Strategy said.
He explained that the entire project was aimed at ensuring that the country's procurement process helped to promote socio-economic development, while adding to the clarion call on businesses to operate in a sustainable manner.
"What it means is, if you are to procure something, you just don't look for anything at all but you look at how that thing affects the sustainability of the environment. That can be in the form of how the goods were produced, transported, consumed or even disposed," Mr Jerry said.
He also used the opportunity provided at the forum to encourage the general public to make inputs into the review of the STDs, explaining that it was only through such contributions that the outcome would meet the industry's expectations.
By Maxwell Adombila Akalaare/Daily Graphic/Ghana
