The Public Procurement Authority (PPA) wants a review of some portions of the procurement law to raise procurement thresholds for ministries, departments and agencies. The public institutions are not allowed to make procurements above a certain threshold without due approval by a PPA. The threshold varies depending on the government agency, but the PPA says it is constantly inundated with all sorts of claims with several of them being rather negligible. Chief Executive Officer of the PPA, Sallas Mensah, tells Joy Business these negligible claims tend to choke the procurement process thereby frustrating more important approvals. “The time the law was being passed, the value of the cedi and other inflationary trends were not envisaged. Now that those issues have been identified, I think, as a matter of urgency we should go back to the drawing table and revise those thresholds,” he said. “If you take a threshold of a district assembly, it is nothing to write home about, [although] they receive a lot of money from the Common Fund. But if they have to procure one pickup they have to write to Accra for clearance which I think is too much bureaucracy.” Sallas Mensah said it should be possible for many of the MDAs to make some procurement, by a certain scale above their current thresholds without having to come to Accra, provided they satisfy procedure. The PPA chief executive also advocates intensive training for MDAs to ensure that they do proper procurement. Source: Myjoyonline.com/Ghana