OECD and ANSA conferences discuss public procurement and social accountability

Thursday, 27 May 2010 10:05

The Task Force on Procurement, part of the OECD-hosted Working Party on Aid Effectiveness (WP EFF), met in Nairobi on May 3-5, for the first time after the Accra High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness. About 50 experts and practitioners from donor and recipient countries, international organisations and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) discussed procurement system reform in developing countries, and the use of country systems by donors. The DAC event was followed by a second conference that dealt with social accountability in procurement.

Civil society involvement enriches the debate

The Task Force Procurement meeting was the first one with formal civil society representation, after the BetterAid platform became a member of the WP EFF post-Accra. Eurodad and its partners Afrodad, Reality of Aid and Transparency International lead the CSO work on this. The CSO engagement certainly enriched a debate which otherwise largely focused on the technical, institutional and procedural aspects of public procurement and the use of country procurement systems in development cooperation.

CSOs highlighted the need for an enabling environment for CSOs to fulfil their roles as watchdogs of the public procurement process, and also as stakeholders and representatives of citizens’ interests. Public procurement constitutes the lion’s share of government spending, and it is key for both effective delivery of public services to the people and promoting development.

Eurodad stressed that as far as Official Development Assistance is concerned, value for money in procurement needs to be measured in terms of poverty eradication results. Pro-poor procurement means maximizing the benefits of public procurement for the poor, not only through effective delivery of public services, but also through the direct creation of decent jobs and increasing income for the poor promoted by well-targeted contract awards.

Taking policy coherence into account

Due to the economic significance of public procurement, Eurodad also raised the point that governments and aid agencies should also take policy coherence aspects into account─ social, environmental and gender aspects need to be considered. Some aid agencies already require contractors to respect the International Labour Organisation’s conventions on core labour standards (while monitoring compliance leaves room for improvement), and the idea of “green procurement” is slowly gaining traction in developing countries.

Improving donor practices

One serious shortcoming of the Task Force’s work is that it deals only with the procurement systems and procurement reforms in developing countries. This may be necessary since many developing countries still lack functional, transparent and accountable institutions and systems for carrying out one of the public sector’s main tasks. However, recipient country procurement is only one side of the coin, the other side is donors’ own parallel procurement, and this is characterised by numerous shortcomings too.

Many donors still have not reformed their legal frameworks to allow their country offices to fully utilize the partner country’s procurement system. Moreover, a part of aid is still tied, in particular food aid and technical assistance, and there are still numerous entry barriers in place that make it difficult for firms from developing countries to compete for donors’ tenders. In consequence, most contracts are still awarded to firms from the North, and the effectiveness of aid in promoting development, creating jobs and increasing income in the South is reduced. It is hard to understand why a sub-body of the Working Party on Aid Effectiveness does not address the urgent need for reform in the field of donor procurement.

Public procurement and social accountability

The Task Force on Procurement meeting was followed by a second conference, the “Public Procurement Monitoring Forum: Advancing citizens' engagement with government through social accountability”. The Forum, jointly organised by the Affiliated Network for Social Accountability (ANSA) Africa and the World Bank Institute, aimed to strengthen governance in procurement by including citizens in the process. Participants, mainly from African countries, shared their experiences in a peer-learning process, discussing the constraints on citizens groups monitoring the procurement process, and identifying ways that they could be overcome. The newly founded ANSA-Africa Procurement Monitoring Network intends to follow up and provide a platform for interaction and exchange for civil society organisations actively involved in procurement monitoring.