Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Public Procurement (LR0051)

Millions of dollars are lost every year through corrupt contracting and lack of transparent procurement processes for public contracts, especially related to public infrastructure
5. What problem does the commitment aim to address?
Millions of dollars are lost every year through corrupt contracting and lack of transparent procurement processes for public contracts, especially related to public infrastructure. Public Procurement corruption was very high through the manual system. And the e-procurement system is trying to mitigate this.
6. What are the causes of the problem?
Procurement in Liberia has been of the key corruption area. There have been manual procurement processes over a long period of time and the introduction of e-procurement system tend to solve the root cause of corruption. During the manual system, corruption through procurement was very high due to patronage system operational in the country.
6. What solution are you proposing?
Publishing contracting information increases government accountability, promotes fairer competition, encourages civic oversight and helps the government learn from previous successes and failures.
7. What results do we want to achieve by implementing this commitment? What outputs would we like to produce?
Transparency is essential for the responsible management of resources and the potential for growth and economic development that resources can provide through an efficient national procurement effort. Publishing information on how the Liberian government is managing resources will increase public participation and open avenues for the public to hold the government accountable for use of funds.
7. How will the commitment promote transparency?
Empowering citizens with knowledge aligns with the principles and values of the OGP, which emphasizes openness and inform accountability and citizen participation in procurement governance. Closing the feedback loop mechanism is a key component of the procurement process in Liberia.
8. How will the commitment help foster accountability?
Public tenders by PPCC will be public on the e-procurement portal and the result of the procurement processes will be made public on the same portal. This process will ensure data integrity is consistent with the PPCC process. There is a whistleblowing protection to further strengthen accountability.
9. How will the commitment improve citizen participation in defining, implementing, and monitoring solutions? Closing the feedback loop mechanism will be created to continuously incorporate citizens voices in public procurement administration. Citizens, however, are consulted and engaged for their inclusion throughout the fiscal year.

Milestones
Increase procurement transactions through e-Government Procurement System and make data and documents in the contracting process available to the public. This will include approved procurement plans, tendering, bid evaluation reports, contracting, and vendor registration data. Create new procurement regulations, manuals, and Standard Bid Documents based on the revised PPCA and mandate the use of eGP system for all public procurement transactions. Develop mechanism to identify and track procurement performance of businesses including women-led/owned enterprises.

Expected Outputs
# of institutions using the eGovernment procurement system
# of contracting procurement documents made available to the public
# of procurement regulations, manuals and Standard Bid Documents created and published
% use of e-GP system by government ministries and agencies
% of gender ratio businesses tracked through procurement performance