The Minister of Finance, Dr Cassiel Ato Forson, has stated that the government remains committed to deepening transparency and strengthening controls in public procurement to ensure value for money and judicious use of public funds.
In line with that resolve, he stressed that all ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) must strictly comply with the Public Procurement (Amendment) Act, 2016 (Act 914) in their procurement activities.
Dr Forson stressed that MDAs must ensure that all suppliers register with the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) before given approval to offer any service.
"Do not treat procurement as a box to tick, but as a responsibility to the people of Ghana," he stressed.
The minister stated this at the opening session of the 12th public procurement forum held at the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA) yesterday.
It was held on the theme "Deepening Compliance for Public Procurement Efficiency, Transparency and Effectiveness".
The annual engagement was a statutory requirement under Section 3(s) of Act 663, which mandates the PPA to organise an annual forum for consultations on public procurement and related matters.
It brought together Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) as well as procurement officers across the country, offering them the opportunity to discuss compliance with the Public Procurement Law and related matters.
Compliance
Dr Forson said the theme for the forum aligned with the government’s renewed determination to bring full transparency to public procurement to ensure that scarce international resources were used judiciously for development goals.
He said the government had consistently allocated national resources to ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), with the expectation that they would be used to advance the country's development agenda.
The minister stressed the need for heads of MDAs to do their best to eliminate situations in which financial commitments were made without prior assurance of the government's ability to meet them.
He added that every supplier seeking to provide goods, works or consultancy services to a public entity must register with the Public Procurement Authority (PPA).
“We must enforce that requirement to achieve that goal. Under the PPA Act, as amended, CEOs bear responsibility for ensuring that every supplier their organisation deals with is on the PPA's registered supplier database,” he said.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of PPA, Frank Mante, said the PPA had increased the financial thresholds for approving public procurement transactions to GH¢800,000 for certain categories of goods and services to help reduce bureaucratic delays and improve efficiency in public expenditure.
He said the revised thresholds would give heads of procurement entities greater authority to undertake procurement without having to refer every transaction to entity tender committees for approval.
He added that the changes, introduced under the Public Procurement (Thresholds for Approving Authorities and Procurement Methods) Regulations, 2025 (L.I. 2516), were expected to accelerate procurement processes, particularly for relatively smaller transactions.
Mr Mante said the previous threshold for heads of entities in categories A, B and C for the procurement of goods was GH¢100,000, meaning that transactions above that amount had to be referred to entity tender committees for consideration.
