By: Saidu Jalloh
In a bid to move digital, the National Public Procurement Authority has on the 7th December, 2023, at the Ministry of Finance Main Conference Room launched the electronic government procurement tender document to stimulate all procurement and makes procurement activities less cumbersome.
The Chief Executive Officer of the National Public Procurement Authority, Mr. Fodie Konneh in his opening statement acknowledged the presence of all invited guests and gave the reason for the launching of the electronic government procurement in which he said that was to move all government procurement activities from paper based to electronic based, and he said this process has to contain all stakeholders.
He narrated that within his short period at the National Public Procurement Authority, he was made to understand that the stakeholders that were governing the EGP process had only met twice over a three years’ period, and now they are taking a major step in making the EGP tendering process complete. He also expressed that the need for the stakeholders guiding was also eminent, so that is the reason they decided to reach out to all stakeholder and the EGP is not only for the NPPA or either for the Ministry of Finance but for all public procurement activities.
‘’We are here this morning to grace this occasion that the Electronic Government Procurement Tender Document is alive and the project is up and alive and a lot of people has been to EGP programs and for a year or more nothing has been going on, and we people to coming to have update about the project and the milestone we have achieved,’’ Mr. Konneh explain.
He further mentioned that they need to inform all stakeholders so that they could aware of the project all over the following years and that he was happy that they honoured the invitation, and advised that they paid keen attention to the EGP report and that they should continue to champion the EGP report.
He continued that EGP report is not only to Sierra Leone but it has been all over the world including some parts in Africa and they wanted to move to electronic government with this Electronic Government Procurement Tender Document and they are advocating for all stakeholder’s support.
The Board Chairman of NPPA, Alfred Kandeh also gave his speech in which he reminisced of the first launching of the NPPA manual system of procurement and noted that today’s launching was the second important history of the history of NPPA. He said that the manual system was launched in 2004, and it is close two decades with the manual system and that they had made an important strides and had a quite a lot of challenges.
He lamented that going digital would incorporate all the laws and regulations already in existence. He draws back to the statement of the Financial Secretary in which he said that the EGP would make public procurement activities even better than the manual and bring transparency, accountability and also bring competitiveness.
The executive Director of Centre for Accountability and Rule of Law, Ibrahim Tommy also has his saying in the launching of the EGP in which he addressed as a giant step to curb some of the problem of public financial mismanagement especially when it comes to procurement. He reminiscing about the Audit Report in which he lamented that in any four to five pages read, you would see procurement problem.
He sends a message of hope that this EGP document would help solve some of the unresolved procurement issue the public is faced with. He assured NPPA that his organization would continue to support them and monitored the EGP and that not only the launching of the EGP but the effective implementation of it. He made mentioned people would pretend to like but as soon as NPPA started to enforce it people would start undermining it like they did to the NRA ASYCUNDA.
