THERE IS NEED FOR PARLIAMENTARY SCRUTINY OF PROCUREMENT IN THE HEALTH SECTOR

Oct 30, 2012 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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The revelation that one company receives as much as eighty per cent of the value of government pharmaceutical purchases is a most worrying development which raises serious questions about whether the system of national procurement is stimulating competition amongst pharmaceutical companies.
One of the main reasons why there is a system of competitive bidding is in order to ensure that the government gets the best value for money since it is held that through competition amongst bidders value for money is optimized.
The government and especially the President, Donald Ramotar, therefore need to intervene to ensure that this undesirable situation is reversed, and for a number of reasons.
The very fact that one company commands such an imposing share of government procurement in the health sector is indicative that the system of procurement being used needs to be examined to see whether it is meeting the purposes for which it was established.
In the past, the procurement of drugs by the government has attracted the attention of the country’s Auditor General who had pointed out in his annual reports to Parliament that for many years in the past, competitive bidding was bypassed and waivers of tender board requirements were granted for certain procurement to take place.
Recently, the country was told that there was a system of prequalification of bidders for major contracts. Well, the fact that prequalification of bidders has also not promoted greater competition for medicines within the health system, means that the present prequalification system needs to be placed under the microscope to see whether it unfairly discriminates or disqualifies any companies.
This task of placing the system of prequalification under the microscope, it was hoped, would have been undertaken by the Parliamentary Economic Services Committee but not much is being heard about the establishment of this committee which at least one opposition party had promised to bring into being following a High Court ruling that went against the government in relation to parliamentary committees.
If the opposition is serious about making an impact on the culture of governance in Guyana, this is best done through scrutiny of government’s actions and not by passing unenforceable motions or by usurping executive functions through the tabling of its own legislation.
The opposition cannot continue to give lip service to improving public transparency. It has to match its rhetoric by action and the best action that it can take is to ensure that the parliamentary economic services committee is up and running.
The first order of business of that committee should not be to demand the implementation of a procurement commission but to place the government’s procurement of medicines under scrutiny.
There have been threats by at least one opposition party to interrogate the operations of NICIL in parliamentary committees but this threat has turned out to be a damp squib.
There is a need for the procurement of medicines to be placed under the microscope to satisfy the public that everything is above board and that the system does not favour or discriminate against any company or companies.
Certainly from the perspective of the government there should be concern. It is not a desirable situation for any one company to have such a commanding share of government procurement in the health sector. Should this company develop problems, then a national crisis may ensue since the government is highly dependent on this one company for the supply of most of its medicines.
Then there is the possibility of companies with monopoly standing taking advantage of this dominance. But the more fundamental concern is that for one company to have such an overwhelming share of government procurement, means that there is an absence of any real competition and this is worrying for a number of reasons.
It is worrying in that it may suggest problems with the system of procurement or it can be that the other local suppliers simply do not have the capacity. Either way, the problem has to be addressed and it is incumbent for the President to begin to look into this matter.
Unfortunately, public confidence is waning in the President and in the absence of any political will by the government to examine the issue of procurement in the health sector. It will be for the opposition to use the parliamentary economic services committee to interrogate the relevant government officials about the state of affairs of government procurement in the health sector.

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