Procurement Authority operates in rented facility

The Public Procurement Authority (PPA) has appealed to government to expedite action on the Cabinet memorandum for the approval of the public private partnership process that will assist it to own a permanent office.

According to Samuel Sallas Mensah, Chief Executive of PPA, since his assumption of office, efforts have been made to secure a permanent office for the authority but that has not been easy.

“Our continuous operation in rented facilities is having a heavy financial toll on the authority’s scarce resources and gradually becoming unsustainable.”

Speaking at the 8th annual public forum of the Authority in Accra recently, Mr Mensah also called on his successor to ensure that integrity and efficiency in public procurement were entrenched to strengthen PPA’s appeals and complaints mechanism, and further encourage the use of PPA’s procurement planning system, as well as support the electronic procurement initiative and other measures aimed at mainstreaming public procurement into the wider Public Financial Management Framework.

“My utmost concern about the numerous accusations that continue to dominate public discourse on the use of restricted and single-source methods of procurement, which are fully provided for in section 40 of the Public Procurement Act, 2003 (Act 663) is that many of these issues are debated from ill-informed positions and often given undue political slants just to dint the corporate image of the PPA and the ruling government.

“The irony of the issue is that in spite of all the arguments that have been raised against the use of these methods, at no point during the amendment process did we have even one Member of Parliament make a proposal for the introduction of stiffer measures for the use of these methods of procurements or even have them expunged from the law.”