By Rosemary Wayo
Tamale, Aug. 27, GNA – The Public Procurement Authority (PPA) and the Ministry of Local Government, Decentralisation, and Rural Development have held training for stakeholders to equip them on the use of the Ghana Electronic Procurement System (GHANEPS) for procurement activities at their institutions.
The five-day training, held in Tamale, was attended by stakeholders from the Northern, Savannah, North East, Upper West and Upper East Regions.
The stakeholders, included procurement officers, works engineers and planners, who worked with entities that took part in the Ghana Secondary Cities Support Programme executed by the government through the Ministry of Local Government and supported by the World Bank.
They received tuition on setting up users on the GHANEPS to ensure that everyone, who participated in the procurement process at their entities was captured in the system, how to develop and finalise tender documents on the system and how to invite suppliers to participate in tenders.
They were also taught how to do tender opening after submissions had been done by suppliers, how to evaluate after the opening was done, how to finalise their tender evaluation reports to be sent for approval as well as managing contracts in the system.
GHANEPS is an electronic system designed to conduct procurement relationships with suppliers to acquire goods and services at expected savings, allowing civil society organisations and the public to undertake data analysis per the Open Contracting Data Standards (OCDS).
Mr Kwame Prempeh, the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the PPA, who spoke during the training, said GHANEPS would enhance the preparation of tender documents to be completed within a shorter period affected by the auto-population of parts of the tender document from available information in the system.
He noted that the government procurement system had carried out capacity-building training for procurement practitioners and suppliers across the country, and said it promoted competition among suppliers to increase attaining value for money.
Mr Alhassan Abubakari, a participant from the East Mamprusi Municipal Assembly, said the GHANEPS training would make room for transparency within government institutions, adding that complaints about openings in the procurement system would be addressed since everything was digitised.
GNA