‘Guyana’s Procurement Systems Weak’

Apr 18, 2022 News

– IDB highlights lack of guardrails for fairness, best value for almost two decades

Kaieteur News – Public procurement is a critical area that needs prompt improvement, as it represents about a quarter of budgets and plays a critical role improving financial management in the Caribbean. Making these and other fundamental points is the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in its recent report titled, Economic Institutions for a Resilient Caribbean.
One country in need of this prompt improvement is Guyana, says the IDB, as it highlighted that despite 15 years of assessments, the country is still without robust procurement rules. In fact, the IDB wrote in its report that “little progress” had been made to measure and publicly report data in critical areas such as competitive tendering.
Further to this, the development institution noted that public protests related to corruption in the procurement process exacerbate the perception that large swathes of the procurement process are closed to some bidders.
However, the bank’s evaluation does not stop there, as the IDB stated that 23 of the country’s procurement practiced continue to receive the lowest scores (D) Successive Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) assessments.
According to the IDB, this PEFA assessment is a tool for evaluating public financial management, as it provides a thorough, consistent, and evidence-based analysis of public financial management (PFM) performance at a specific point in time and repeated over time. The assessment measures the extent to which PFM systems, processes, and institutions contribute to the achievement of desirable budget outcomes, aggregate fiscal discipline, strategic allocation of resources, and efficient service delivery.
When this PEFA assessment was conducted on Guyana, the IDB said that the results reflected “poor competition, value for money and procurement controls.” Furthermore, it observed “considerable gaps”, particularly regarding the institutional framework, management capacity, market prices and transparency of the system. To this end, the report added, “As well as the ongoing need to achieve the objectives of fairness, transparency, and best value.”
The report also indicated that weak linkages between in-year-budget adjustments, procurement plans and internal control weaknesses within personnel and procurement management are among the shortcomings identified as hampering improvements in the operational efficiency of service delivery.
To address these gaps, the bank identified a slew of recommendations (see table attached).
Notably, to tackle some of the aforementioned weaknesses, the IDB wrote that in 2014 had provided technical cooperation to modernize public procurement and strengthen public financial management to streamline the allocation and management of public resources. The bank had also given support to upgrade and implement technological platforms for expenditure systems.
It is against this that the bank noted, “The 2019 Budget Speech recognized the importance of a sound PFM system and stressed the government’s commitment to improving it.”

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