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  1. MAPS Initiative
  2. Assessments
  3. Country cases
  4. Mauritius

Quick facts

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Country: Mauritius
Year of assessment: Financial Year 2020-2021

Procurement value: Rs 16 Billion [€400 000 000]

Principal organisation: Ministry of Finance, Economic Planning and Development

Main partners:

the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the World Bank (WB) 

Background

  • The PPO initiated the process of implementing an e-procurement system in 2015. The government opted to for a MAPS assessment to evaluate the success of this initiative as well as to increase public trust in the systems generally in place.
  • The Ministry of Finance, Economic Planning and Development (MOFEPD) made the request to the World Bank for a MAPS Assessment in August 2019.
  • The legal framework for Public Procurement in use in Mauritius has been based on the UNCITRAL Model Law (1994). The system in place provides for the establishment of 3 institutions namely:

(i) The Procurement Policy Office (PPO, body responsible for issuance and review of policies),

(ii) The Central Procurement Board (CPB, body responsible for vetting of bidding documents, evaluation of bids and recommendation for award) and

(iii) The Independent Review Panel (IRP, body responsible to receive and study appeal made by aggrieved contractors and suppliers).

  • Currently, there is no centralised procurement system in Mauritius, the practice being that each public body has its own procurement department.
  • With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was imperative to review the legal provisions for emergency procurement, so MAPS was timely in this regard.

Process

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  • The assessment started in December 2020 and the first draft was issued in December 2021. The final report received the MAPS Seal of Approval and was published in November 2022.
  • The assessment included an analysis based on reviewed procurement files, procurement data collected from several Agencies and public bodies, as well as interviews from various Regulatory Public Bodies. In addition, a stakeholders validation workshop was held in November 2021
  • Public sector, private sector and civil society representatives were all engaged as part of the assessment.
  • Due to COVID 19 Pandemic and global travel restrictions the stakeholders’ validation workshop had to be held with a restricted number of participants. For the same reasons, most of the follow up meetings with the consultants were held virtually.

Key results and impacts

Some of the main recommendations from the assessment are:

  • Enhance the performance of the public procurement system of Mauritius by modernising the PPA and PPR and supporting legal framework documents, in conjunction with full roll-out of e-Procurement.
  • Consider and implement measures to simplify the framework and enhance clarity by improving the way in which the legal framework documents and the connections between them are presented.
  • Implement a sustainable public procurement framework, as announced in the Budget Papers of 2021.
  • Update the role of CPB in respect of major contracts, with CPB and PPO as enablers, and increase accountability of public bodies in delivery of public services, from the time need is identified until the need is satisfied.
  • Professionalize and train procurement workforce of public bodies with increased accountability in delivery of public services.
  • Introduce a mechanism for monitoring contract performance to contain delays in contract implementation in combination with e-Procurement
  • Empower and encourage homegrown credible and independent CSOs to participate in monitoring procurement process (without involvement in evaluation and selection process) and contract implementation.
  • Update the e-Procurement to use the Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS) also through end-to-end usage of the e-Procurement System
  • Create an enabling environment to encourage the exercise of discretionary powers with Accountability and Decision-making Mechanism (ADM) to be instituted

With the financial assistance of the AfDB, the country has already embarked on two initiatives:

(i) Appointment of an e-Procurement expert, responsible for reviewing the current e-Procurement system design and infrastructure, developing the functional specifications of the system, project management, quality assurance of the software and operationalization of the system, report writing and presentation of the report (Assignment ongoing)

(ii) Appointment of a legal expert, responsible to assess the Legal, Regulatory and Policy Framework related to e-procurement and prepare the Terms of Reference for a comprehensive review of the procurement framework in this regard. (Assignment ongoing)

Lessons learned

The biggest challenges were interactions with stakeholders, meetings with consultants and collecting responses at the validation workshop, given the pandemic situation during the assessment activities. However, the external parties and the PPO team managed the process effectively, despite the situation.

“The office intends to use MAPS, amongst others, to evaluate the success of the reform initiative as well as to increase public trust in the public procurement system in place”

Statement from the Financial Secretary