The Public Procurement Authority on Tuesday announced the amendment of the Public Procurement Act, 2003 (Act 663) by Parliament on Friday, March 18, 2016.

A statement in Accra signed by Mr Samuel Sallas-Mensah, the Chief Executive and copied to the Ghana News Agency, noted that Procurement Entities, Procurement Officers/Practitioners, Civil Society Organizations, Service Providers and the general public that Parliament passed the Public Procurement (Amendment) Bill on Friday March , 18, 2016 thus  amended the Public Procurement Act, 2003 (Act 663).

The Public Procurement Act, 2003 (Act 663) which was passed in 2003 and came into operation in 2004 as part of government’s public financial management reforms had to be amended to propel public procurement into a second generation of reform and to streamline bottlenecks identified over a decade of implementation.

The amendments have re-categorised government institutions to include organisations not initially covered.  Thresholds have been increased across board and Procurement Entities re-constituted to ensure efficient administration of the increased thresholds.

The statement said Provision had been made to accommodate decentralised procurement, in line with government’s decentralization policy.  The amendments address other administrative challenges, and introduced enabling provisions for policy initiatives such as Sustainable Public Procurement, Framework Contracting and Electronic Procurement.

A key feature addressing local content policy in the infrastructure, economic and social services sectors (in particular for roads and energy) was the upward review by Parliament of the Entity Tender Committee approval threshold for Works, from its current level to GH¢15, 000,000 (Fifteen Million Ghana Cedis), among other things, for institutions falling under Categories A and B of the Amendments.

Finally, the statement said, to reduce administrative costs and enhance efficiency, all tender review boards with the exception of the Central Tender Review Board would be dissolved.  Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) would continue to seek concurrent approval from the Central Tender Review Committee, and the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) would use the newly created Regional Tender Review Committee.

It reminded, Procurement Entities that the amendments were not effective until it was signed by the President and that the Authority would announce implementation details as soon as the amendments received the President’s assent.