Today, the Procurement Policy Office (PPO) under the aegis of the Ministry of Finance organised with the collaboration of the African Development Bank (AfDB) a dissemination workshop of the Methodology for Assessing Procurement System (MAPS) Assessment Report at the Caudan Arts Centre in Port Louis.
The workshop had the presence of the Director of the PPO, Mr H. Rambhojun O.S.K., the Director of the Fiduciary Services AfDB ,Frank Mvula and other prominent personalities. In his address, the Director of the PPO laid out previous actions and initiatives carried out by the government of Mauritius in line with the recommendations of the Country Procurement Assessment, which were:
i) The introduction of the Public Procurement Act 2006
ii) Development of the Public Procurement Regulations
iii) Implementation of the Electronic Procurement System (EPS) in 2015
iv) Setting up of the Public Procurement Board
v) And provision for the training of public procurement staffs in all Ministries and departments of the government, amongst others.
Furthermore, the Director of the PPO highlighted that every year improvement is made to the Public Procurement Act and mentioned that the MAPS Assessment started in December 2020, which covered the central government, the local government and parastatal organizations.
Moreover, Mr. B. Dabeesing, member of the PPO, in his address said that since 2015 the PPO embarked on the E-Procurement System, an application posted on the government online center which enables all public bodies and suppliers to electronically conduct procurement proceedings. The aims of the E-Procurement system are to improve the way suppliers do business with the government by bringing Efficiency, Speed, Cost Savings, Transparency and accountability to the Public Procurement Processes.
In addition, he discussed the Assessment of the PPO using MAPS had the objectives to assess the strength, weaknesses and gaps of the Public Procurement System in Mauritius and benchmarking it with international best practices and standard. Mr. Dabeesing mentioned that this assessment was aligned with the agenda of the public reform aiming to digitalize the government procurement system and moving away from the paper-based procurement.
In addition, the Director of the Fiduciary Services AfDB, Frank Mvula thanked the government of Mauritius for choosing to partner with the African Development Bank in undertaking the Assessment of the Public Procurement System. Mr. Mulva discussed that the objectives of the report were to boost the development of a modernize and efficient public procurement system for Mauritius with close monitoring, regular audits, review, capacity building and research. He commended the PPO for their leadership during the Assessment despite of the difficult and challenging times brought by the Covid19 pandemic.
The MAPS Assessment Report of the Public Procurement System of Mauritius using MAPS II is available at www.mapsinitiative.org