Briceño Targets Procurement Reform with Sweeping New Measures

Rather than waiting for the dust to settle around the Mira contracts controversy, the Briceño administration says it’s moving to overhaul the entire procurement system. Facing growing calls for greater accountability in government spending, Prime Minister John Briceño today unveiled plans to modernize how public contracts are awarded and monitored, including the introduction of a centralized electronic procurement platform. The Prime Minister says the initiative is not a knee-jerk reaction to recent events but the result of years of work with the Inter-American Development Bank aimed at making government purchasing more transparent, efficient, and cost-effective. Here’s how he says the proposed reforms could change the way government does business.

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“On next week Tuesday, I have asked the Financial Secretary – we’re going to have the Financial Secretary, the Contractor General, and the Auditor General to come in to talk to cabinet, to explain to them the FARA, the Finance and Audit Reform Act the store supply, the store control supply and the financial orders. And at, during that presentation, I’m also bringing in the CEO so that both the CEO and the minister have a direct understanding of what can be done. The following week, on the fourteenth of July we are going to present a project that we have been working through our ministry, through the Central Execution Unit. We’re coming up with what we call a central procurement unit. It is a project we’ve been working with the IDB and looking at how other countries have been doing procurement for the country successfully. In short, what will happen is that there’s going to be a electronic window so that every ministry will be required or compelled by law that they have to put it there to the public. So if the BDF wants tenders, it has to go to the public. If they want to buy anything under ten thousand, whatever, it has to go out there in the public to say, “We’re buying.” So there has to be openness and transparency and accountability. I think that’s going to transform things, but also I believe that we’ll be able to save money.  Why do I say that? Because right now, different ministries buy from different vendors, and there’s generally a twenty percent discount, and in many instances the government does not get that twenty percent discount or ten percent, whatever discount that they get when they buy.”

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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