Stakeholders benefit from crucial Public Procurement workshop

Jul 20, 2016 News

A section of the participants at the workshop

In an effort to strengthen Guyana’s public procurement systems, a crucial one-day workshop was held for public and private sector stakeholders yesterday at Herdmanston Lodge.
The course is expected to benefit officials in Government Ministries, the National Tender Board and other agencies associated with the field of Public Procurement.
The facilitator was Mr. Richard Panton, an expert in the area of Public Procurement.
Officials at the workshop noted that enhanced knowledge in that field is considered vital in the context of reforms and bilateral trade agreements where Public Procurement is increasingly on the agenda, especially within the CARIFORUM-EU Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA).
CARIFORUM, or the Forum of Caribbean Group of African, Caribbean and Pacific States, is a body comprising 16 participating states, that promotes and coordinates policy dialogue, cooperation and regional integration, particularly within the framework of the CARIFORUM-Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA).
Furthermore, it was noted by Junior Finance Minister Jaipaul Sharma that the course will equip those in attendance with knowledge of the broader context within which national procurement policies operate and the tools needed to develop professional procurement systems and practices.
He said that the training course is an output of the CARIFORUM-EU Capacity Building Project that is funded under the 10th European Development Fund (EDF). Sharma stated that the project’s overall objective is to support CARIFORUM Member States’ beneficial integration in the world economy.
Specifically, the Junior Finance Minister articulated that it seeks to help Member States to implement their EPA commitments in the areas of competition, procurement and customs and trade facilitation.
This newspaper understands that a consortium led by Equinoccio (Spain), and which includes the London School of Economics (UK), SGS (Netherlands) and Maastricht School of Management (Netherlands), is implementing the project.
Sharma explained that a needs assessment conducted for CARIFORUM identified region-wide capacity deficits as a major constraint to participating states implementing their obligations under the EPA.
As such, he asserted that the one-day project – “Capacity Building within Member States (CARIFORUM) in the areas of Competition, Procurement and Customs and Trade Facilitation for the implementation of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA)” – aimed to address these deficits by providing training for public and private sector organizations.

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