Accra, Nov. 08, GNA - Ghana's public procurement system has been lauded by the Commonwealth Secretariat as one that conforms to international best practices and a model for excellence.

Speaking in Accra, Mrs Oluwatonyin Job, an official at the Secretariat said her outfit "is proud to collaborate with Ghana because of its readiness to share its achievements and experience in procurement practices with other countries. She said even though most Commonwealth countries were carrying out procurement, the levels of development differed noting that Ghana stood tall in the way it had implemented the process since the last three years.

She said these when she led a delegation of officials from the East, Southern and Western Africa who are on a study tour in the country to learn from Ghana's Pubic procurement Monitoring and Evaluation (PPME) tool.

Mrs Job said the objective of the tour was to chart a strategy towards creating a common standard practices within the Commonwealth Public Procurement Network (CPPN) established last year to foster sharing of experiences. She said; "there is the need to continue to interact and share experiences to avoid other peoples' failure and avoid wastage." Mr Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, Minister of Finance and Economic Planning in a statement read for him said it was a privilege for Ghana to be peer review and expressed the hope that the tour would achieve stronger collaboration through effective networking. He said government developed the PPME tool mainly to assist in assessing levels of compliance with the Procurement Act 2003 (Act 663) through baseline indicator system, performance assessment system and measurement reports.

Mr Adjenim Boateng Adjei, Chief Executive of the Public Procurement Authority said so far 213 entities have been assessed on the basis of their procurement activities in the area of integrity and transparency, institutional framework and management capacity. He noted that, despite some few problems, the overall performance indicated improvements.

Mr Adjei said at present the Authority has submitted to the Attorney General proposed amendments to the Law to make it more effective in implementation. One area of the amendment is to review the threshold of award of contracts for approving authorities due to differences in size, volume and value of work and responsibilities. 08 Nov. 07