21 Oct 2015

In an effort to reduce onerous requirements during the tendering processes, the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Board (PPADB), held a consultative workshop to improve the efficiency of the public procurement process.  

In his welcome remarks at the two-day workshop recently, PPADB’s executive director, Mr Elijah Motshedi said it was important to engage key stakeholders before taking a position because of the important role that all the board’s key stakeholders play in the procurement process.

In line with the PPADB’s strategic value of “partnerships,” he said the organisation continues to engage key stakeholders on issues affecting public procurement to enable them to effectively deliver on their mandate as outlined in the PPAD Act.  

Mr Motshedi said this would help to come up with collective solutions to issues affecting the efficiency of the procurement process, value for money in the public procurement process, improving the ease of doing business in Botswana, improving the implementation of the Citizen Economic Empowerment policy and discussing draft guidelines for the suspension and delisting process.

The workshop recommendations, he said, would also help to improve the ease of doing business and reduce the cost of tendering. By the end of the workshop, he said participants were expected to have discussed and proposed ways to improve the implementation of these, “so as to enhance value for money to government and transparency in the procurement process.”

The workshop agenda included topics such as the use of engineers' estimates for the evaluation of construction tenders, overcharging of government by the private sector and mandatory subcontracting and unbundling of projects. 

The discussions also provided participants with an opportunity to discuss issues affecting the implementation of the Citizen Economic Empowerment policy initiatives and to suggest improvements to ensuring that the policy was effectively implemented. Ends