Quick facts
Country: Burkina Faso |
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Year of assessment: 2019 | |
Procurement value: Approx. €639,952,151 |
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Principal organisation: DGCMEF (National Directorate for the Control of Public Procurement and Financial) |
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Main partners: World Bank (WB), the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Swiss Cooperation Office (SDC) |
Background
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The assessment took place in the context of public procurement reforms carried out in 2016-2017 and focused on the implementation of the new West African Economic and Monetary Union harmonized public finance framework.
- The objective of the assessment was to identify the main strengths and weaknesses of the national public procurement system and public service delegations and to formulate recommendations that can lead to further reform measures
Process
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Key results and impacts
Some of the main recommendations are the following:
- Adopt a sustainable public procurement strategy allowing sustainability criteria to be considered to integrate the economic, social, and environmental dimension of public procurement.
- Set up a mandatory e-Procurement system, integrated with the public financial management system, that allows the electronic management of the whole procurement cycle.
- Strengthen contract management by introducing: (i) monitoring of the management of contract execution at the fiduciary and technical level by an external control body; (ii) the use of independent technical audits for complex contracts; (iii) reconciliation between objectives in contract completion reports in a standard format; (iv) the obligation to publish endorsements; (v) a site for the publication of statistics on the award and execution of contracts; and (vi) an exhaustive archiving mechanism for the award and execution of contracts.
- Set up a legal framework for systematic in-depth investigations in the event of reports of cases of fraud or corruption of public officials, as well as systematic referral to justice in the event of confirmation of fraud.
The successful implementation of the recommendations should bring the national public procurement system in line with internationally recognised standards and good practices and thus improve the overall performance of the national public procurement system. Ultimately, this improvement should lead to better absorption of investment credits in compliance with the general principles of public procurement, with a view to achieving development objectives.
" It is important to assess the Burkina Faso public procurement system through the revised MAPS to compare our procurement system to the international procurement standards. Findings and recommendations will help us to improve our national public procurement system.”
Senior government official during the validation of the concept note
Lessons learned
The evaluation of the performance of actors in the public procurement system encountered difficulties, the most significant of which concerned the data collection phase. In view of the difficulties encountered during the collection of the MAPS evaluation, the contracting authorities have been asked to keep public procurement documents properly and to archive them in accordance with the formally established procedures for archiving public procurement documents. Impartiality and potential conflicts of interest are important to consider when putting in place the assessment team. Some of the institutions involved in the assessment were also under assessment, which created resistance to some conclusions. To counter this, it was necessary to bring on board an external independent expert. |