District assemblies educated on procurement laws

A three-day workshop on public procurement is being organised for all 17 metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies in the Central Region, to address procurement lapses in the various assemblies, which is creating agitations among party members and public officials.

The workshop, which opened in Cape Coast on Monday, was jointly organised by the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, the Local Service Secretariat, Regional Coordinating Council, and the Public Procurement Authority, to bring sanity into public sector procurement practices in the region, and throughout the country.

Speaking at the function, the Director of Planning at the Local Government Service Secretariat, Mr. Kofi Agamah said procurement processes have been identified as one of the major lapses in the various district assemblies, hence the need for the workshop to build the capacity of those at the local level.

Mr. Agamah advised district chief executives to take the workshop seriously, to improve the procurement processes in their various assemblies.

The Principal Operations Officer at the Public Procurement Authority, Nana Asiedu Kotwi, added that the workshop would harmonise public procurement processes in the public service. According to him, public procurement accounts for 50% to 70% of the national budget, as well as 14% of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), while it claims 24% of the country's total imports.

He said public procurement would ensure the successful delivery of government policies and public service, reduce corruption, encourage private sector growth and investments, as well as ensure sound public financial management.

Nana Kotwi noted that the lack of rules and regulations to guide, direct, train and monitor public procurement, and the absence of a comprehensive procurement policy and authority for procurement entities, as some of the challenges facing public procurement in the country.

The Coordinating Director of the Central Regional Coordinating Council, Mr. Kwame Oppong, pointed out that district assemblies in the region were still struggling to fully grasp the requirements of the procurement law, adding that the problem became evident when only two out of the then 13 districts in the region passed the functional organisational assessment tool in 2007.

Mr. Oppong, therefore, called for the need for sound, effective and efficient financial management of the country's limited resources, and active participation of departmental heads in administrative and financial management practices, to bring the needed economic development to the region.

The assemblies were taken through the role of procurement and legal framework, procurement principles, methods and ethics, tender evaluation procedures, and contract management.