Commodore Steve Obimpeh (Rtd), Chairman of the Public Procurement Governing Board (PPGB), has said about 95 percent of all the issues raised in the annual Auditor-General�s report concerned public procurement.
He said public procurement also accounted for more than 70 percent of government expenditure after personnel emoluments.
This, he said, was a critical component of government�s expenditure management structure and therefore required efficient and prudent management to be able to administer the nation�s economy.
Commodore Obimpeh said this in an address read for him by Mr. Kwame Asante, Vice Chairman of the PPGB, at a two-day training workshop on the Public Procurement Act,2003(ACT 663) for Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief executives (MMDCEs) and their Coordinating Directors from the Ashanti, Brong-Ahafo, Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions.
The programme was designed to equip the more than 160 participants with the understanding and appreciation of the provisions of the Act to ensure that waste and losses were minimized if not avoided in the process of public expenditure and also educate them on the highlights of the proposed amendments of the Act.
Commodore Obimpeh said governance institutions which came under the scope of application of the Act were facing daunting implementation challenges, citing capacity gaps that had led to gross misunderstanding of its provisions.
The public Procurement Authority (PPA) had therefore over the past three years trained more than 8,000 public procurement functionaries and about 1,500 personnel in oversight institutions such as the Internal Audit Agency and the Auditor-General�s Department under its Nationwide Short-Term Training Programme among others, he added.
Mr. Agyenim Boateng Agyei, Chief Executive Officer of the PPA, said public procurement constituted between 50 to 70 percent of state budget after deductions of national emoluments, more than 17 percent of Gross Domestic Products (GDP), about 24 percent of total imports as well as about 80 percent of national tax revenue.
Mr. Kwadwo Nyamekye-Marfo, Brong-Ahafo Regional Minister, said there was a compelling necessity for government to promote effective functioning of the public procurement process.
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