Institutions such as the District Tender Board, the Ghana National Procurement Agency (GNPA) and the Ghana Supply Commission will no longer procure goods and services on behalf of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).

This follows the passage by Parliament last year of the public Procurement Act (Act 663). Instead, the MDAs are to set up their own Tender Committees and Tender Review Boards to handle procurement matters. The deputy minister of finance, Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei announced this in Accra yesterday April 2 when he opened a two-day seminar for 28 Chief Directors of selected MDAs.

The purpose of the seminar was to update the Chief Directors knowledge of the public sector financial management reform programme (PUFMAR) generally and of the financial administration audit agency Act of 2003 (Act 654) the internal audit agency act of 2003 (Act 658) and the public procurement act.

Dr. Osei challenged the participants to study the laws critically and to develop procedural mechanisms that would give full effect to the laws in order to ensure the prudent management of the public finances. He asked the chief directors to see themselves as being in the vanguard of the reform process and said that it was up to them to give meaning to the legislation by making it workable.

The deputy finance minister said that the acts were important ?triggers? for Ghana?s progress towards the completion point of the HIPC debt relief process. Dr. Osei said that at the end of the seminar, each chief director would be required to provide a list of the members of their MDAs tender committee and tender review board. They would also be tasked to establish internal audit units and to develop procurement plans.