Public monopoly over procurement to be broken

Koforidua, July 30, GNA - The new Public Procurement Act to be operational on August 27 will break the monopoly of state institutions in the public procurement services and boost accountability and transparency.

Act 663 of 2003 is expected to end the domination of the Ghana Supply Commission and the Ghana National Procurement Agency. A procurement specialist of the World Bank, Mr Tsri Apronti, made this known when he addressed a two-day public awareness workshop on the Act for over 500 participants drawn from the public sector. He said the Act had identified weaknesses in the current procurement system as lack of accountability, transparency and efficiency.

Mr Apronti said when the right controls, monitoring and competition were allowed in procurement it often led to lower prices. He said out of the 13 trillion cedis of Government budget for 2003, 8.5 trillion cedis were spent on procurement.

Mr Apronti said the research indicated that Ghana had the highest cost of road construction in the West Africa due to lack of control and monitoring of contracts and procurements.