Mr. Mohammed BOUSSAID, Minister of Economy and Finance, presented Tuesday, July 2nd, 2014, before the Finance and Economic Development Board at the House of Representatives, the Government's plan for public procurement reform.
In his speech, Mr. BOUSSAID stressed that the bill on public procurement aims to continue the process of reform and moralization of public procurement system. For this purpose, he clarified the need to review the legal references those specific both as regards the conclusion and execution of public procurement and those relating to financing public contracting in particular through pledging in order to overcome the negative aspects of the current legislation adopted since 1948.
The Minister also stressed the importance of enhancing the current system to a level to enable it to accompany the innovations in the international law and meet the most transparent international standards. He also drew attention to the objective assigned to reform the pledging system of procurements as a means of financing public works. Such objective consists on setting up a comprehensive reform for these markets, instead of being limited only to the amendment of the Decree on their conclusion and their control.
Within this framework, Mr. BOUSSAID called for moving beyond the legal and procedural aspects for the reform of the public procurement system to include the challenges of economic, social and environmental levels for public orders. He explained that public contracts are seen as a lever of economic policies, a job creation support and an environmental protection.
The Minister stressed before the board members that the current system of pledging of public procurements doesn’t meet the essential objective for which it was created, that of facilitating the access of businesses including SMEs, to public contracts financing.