The Ghana Institute of Procurement and Supply (GIPS) has been launched in Accra as a local procurement professional body.

Mr Basil Ahiable, Interim Chairman of GIPS, said the birth of such a professional body was long overdue, considering the significant growth in the profession over the last couple of years.

This, he said, had been largely influenced by the growing awareness of the role procurement played in the effective functioning and profitability any venture.

He, therefore, commended the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) for its relentless efforts to collaborate with other professionals to ensure the birth of GIPS.

GIPS, he said, would help to provide central organisation for practitioners and students of the procurement and supply chain profession, with a view to ensuring the welfare, advancement, high standard of integrity and probity in respect to the practice, and maintaining and advancing a code of ethics and conduct among members.

He said GIPS would also pursue collaborative research and other activities to improve upon knowledge in the profession, as well as promoting, encouraging and supervising the study of the procurement and supply profession, by maintaining highest standards compatible with the principle of the profession.

He said it would complement the efforts of other local professional bodies to promote high ethical standards and professionalism in the procurement and supply chain practice.

Mr Ahiable said, per the constitution of GIPS, membership shall consist of all professionals and practitioners of procurement and supply chain management, adding that accredited members of similar international bodies may be granted partial or full exemption.

“In the short term we do not intend to run examinable programmes, however, within the next five years when membership has grown and adequate structures are in place, we expect to organise local examinations for members and also obtain an Act of Parliament for the Institute which will make it a very strong force to reckon with in Ghana,” he said.

He urged procurement practitioners and professionals to support GIPS to become a strong professional body to promote and protect the ethics of the profession and guarantee high standards in the practice of procurement.

Mr Samuel Sallas-Mensah, Chief Executive Officer of the PPA, said the newly established body would help provide a controlled environment for the procurement practice in the country.

He admonished leadership of the Institute to be wary of some of the negative tendencies such as selfish agenda, ego, politics, power struggle and poor leadership, which could derail its success.

Delivering a lecture on the topic “From the backroom to the boardroom”, Professor Douglas Boateng, an internationally acclaimed consultant on Procurement and Supply, called for attitudinal change from practitioners of the profession.

He also donated books, which he had authored, to the PPA to help augment its efforts at developing the requisite capacity of procurement professionals..