Government to launch online portal to advertise Procurement Contracts
Guyana
Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo has announced that the Guyana Government will soon be rolling out an online portal to advertise Government contracts. He believes it will be a move to improve transparency and efficiency to ensure a fairer tendering system.
At a press conference on Thursday, Mr. Jagdeo said the Government is hoping to bring more small and medium size contractors into the pool of contractors and give them an equal opportunity to be part of the tendering process. He said while the Government is expanding the system, it will be looking forward to better quality work from the contractors.
“One of the first manifestations you will see next year is a procurement website that will now advertise contractors around the country. So the current way of doing this, is that you put ads in the newspapers mainly, so in 2024 alone so the cost to the treasury of putting out those ads in the newspapers was nearly $800M that went to the newspaper and once it goes in the newspapers it disappears, people can’t see it the following day,”Mr. Jagdeo said.
On the other hand, he explained that if there is a procurement site in place, once the tender is published it will be available for the duration of the tender period as oppose to a few days like what is currently being done with the Newspapers. This he said, will ensure every person, regardless of location will be able to see the available tendering opportunities.
“We will amend the laws to ensure that happens and we will also be using an online media outfit to carry the ads because they reach more people. So, we are not going to cut out the ads totally but we are going to cut down the cost or give online media outlets that get no share of this ad, although they reach more viewers than the newspapers themselves ,” Mr. Jagdeo stated.
According to the Vice President, the move is in keeping with the President promises in his inaugural address to make the procurement system more transparent and accessible to every Guyanese.
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