Luanda - Contracting public entities should adopt the Electronic Public Procurement tender mechanism and the statistical disclosure of its procedures, as part of transparency and governance, recommended this Friday the Secretary of State for Budget and Public Investment, Juciene de Sousa.
Of the 125 tender procedures carried out by the National Service for Public Procurement (SNCP) over the last five years, only 2.5 percent were accordingly with Electronic Public Procurement.
According to the Secretary of State, the 125 procedures generated 197 contracts signed with Micro, Small and Medium-sized Companies, in a business volume of more than 367 billion Kwanzas.
"The challenge goes to contracting public entities to adhere to Electronic Public Procurement, in addition to their duty of cooperation with the National Public Procurement Service in the field of transparency and adequate statistical disclosure of their procedures", said the official.
In the view of the secretary of the Ministry of Finance, it is necessary to make public procurement a privileged instrument for boosting the interest of the community, making the citizens' needs, their real aspirations, always underlying any public contract.
During a seminar on the National Week of Public Procurement, which ended Friday, Juciene de Sousa said that contracting entities should make public spending increasingly efficient, with emphasis on mechanisms to combat corruption, which is a permanent threat.
“The entities would be creating conditions for a better business environment and promoting economic diversification, making hiring a true instrument of opportunities for economic operators”, she considered.
As for the main objectives of the Public Contracting Week, the Secretary of State for the Budget and Public Investment said that it aims to stimulate the debate around the continuous improvement of the quality of public contracts.
Juciane de Sousa stressed that the Public Contracts Law intends to prioritize national production, allowing Public Contracting Entities to establish a margin of preference for the proposed prices, for competitors that are Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises.
This margin of preference, according to her, must be explained, when defining the award criteria, in the tender programme or in the letter of invitation to submit a proposal.
“However, notwithstanding the actions taken to publicize the National Service for Public Procurement, the adherence of Public Contracting Entities to Electronic Procurement is still inexpressive – both in terms of the number of procedures and the volume of purchases. We may be talking about only 2.5% of the total number of procedures”, she noted.
A cooperation protocol was signed between the SNCP and the Angolan Association of Designers and Consultants.
Among the themes of the seminar, there was the Quality of the public investment project for an excellent contract, the State of the art and the Impact of works contracts at local level. OPF/AC/NIC
