| The Chief Executive Officer of the Public Procurement Authority (PPA), Mr. Adjenim Boateng Adjei, has called on the International Voluntary Standards Organisations to seek ways of involving development agencies, developing and transition countries in their decision making as far as the institutionalisation of standards for consumer goods, works and services are concerned. According to him, this will be a sure way of making enforcement of those standards globally acceptable and much more effective. He made this call during the ISEAL Alliance High Level Conference on Governmental Use of Voluntary Standards held in Geneva, Switzerland, from the 16th -17th of October, 2008. The purpose of the conference was to examine the use of voluntary standards as a means to deliver social, environmental and public policy objectives. This has become necessary as governments all over the world sometimes depend on these standards to develop their public procurement tenders, regional development initiatives and the management of natural resources. Mr. Adjei’s invitation as a Guest Speaker for the conference was at the instance of the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs of the Swiss Government (co-sponsors of the conference and the main champions of the Marrakech Taskforce on Sustainable Public Procurement). This taskforce forms part of the UN 10 year framework of programmes for Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) and has a membership of 9 countries of which Ghana as the only African country. In his address, Mr. Adjei affirmed the fact that sustainable public procurement is about spending public funds to meet present needs without compromising the opportunities of future generations and therefore emphasized on the rationale of the SPP policy expected to ensure our procurement actions do not impact negatively on the society and the environment at the expense of economic objectives. He noted that Ghana has since March, 2007 considered Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP) as one of its major policy initiatives designed to consolidate the gains of the country’s public procurement reforms and has therefore adopted an action plan towards its realization. This, he said will begin with the inauguration of a local taskforce later this year to spear-head its implementation which will ultimately be integrated into the public procurement process. According to Mr. Adjei, all aspects of existing stand-alone laws, standards and policies that bother on social and environmental considerations, will be harmonized. |
