More powers to the Treasury in procurement process
The Treasury has been entrusted with more powers to speed up the state procurement mechanism, being assigned supervisory authority over a process that was earlier handled by ministries.
Instead of ministries appointing committees and supervising these committees for project procurement under their purview, the Treasury will now supervise these committees with names for these committees submitted by the ministries concerned. These details were first revealed in a Sunday Times report a few weeks ago.
The government has given powers to the Treasury Secretary or his Deputy Secretary to appoint seven procurement and other committees assigned by the Cabinet of Ministers, a senior Treasury official said.
The government has taken this recent decision to accord these powers to high Treasury officials to ensure the speed in carrying out procurement on important state projects and activities, he disclosed.
These seven committees will be appointed by the Treasury Secretary or Deputy Secretary from time to time for different types of items.
The Standing Cabinet appointed Procurement Committees (SCAPC), Special Standing Cabinet appointed Procurement Committees (SSCAPC), Cabinet appointed Procurement Committees (CAPC), Cabinet appointed Consultancy Procurement Committees (CACCP), Cabinet appointed Negotiating Committees (CANC) and Cabinet appointed Tender Committees (CATC) are among these seven committees.
A large number of decisions reported at every Cabinet meeting is in respect of approvals for awarding contracts for construction of buildings for the government including hospitals, Divisional Secretariats, schools, universities and other infrastructure facilities.
This procedure has become a time wasting exercise of the Cabinet of Ministers as they had to spend their time on more important issues of national level, the senior official said.
The decision to vest these powers on the Treasury has been taken due to this reason and also by considering strong concerns being expressed by foreign missions, overseas investors, and local contractors over a clear breakdown of Sri Lanka’s Procurement Appeals Process.
Procurement planning has to be better integrated with Public Finance Management during budget preparation and execution, including procedures for flow of funds, audit, accountability, and anti-corruption measures, he pointed out.
The Department of Public Finance (DPF) functioning under the Treasury played the role of managing the expenditure in public sector organisations and had the responsibility for a sound public finance regulatory framework which improves transparency, accountability and service delivery in the public sector.
The DPF has issued several guidelines for the benefit of public sector organisations outlining procedures and methodologies for the procurement of goods and services.