Around the world, procurement processes—which are vital to ensuring an affordable, reliable, and high-quality supply of health products—remain fraught with obstacles. Further, the ongoing pandemic is magnifying challenges, for both COVID-19-related supplies and other essential health products. This paper summarizes current challenges in health product markets in low- and middle-income countries; presents estimates for the range of potential savings that could be realized from improved procurement; and highlights possible policy options for the way forward. From simulations of three procurement reform approaches, we find that 50 of the poorest low- and middle-income countries could achieve savings between $10 to $26 billion per year, equivalent to 16 to 41 percent of the estimated $63 billion in annual spending on health products. Precise estimates of the potential savings from improved procurement of health products are difficult to compute due to scarce data. We also recognize that procurementrelated reforms are contingent on overcoming complex political-economy dynamics in the real world. Nevertheless, our findings provide an illustrative range for the magnitude of possible savings and highlight the value proposition of addressing the inefficiencies that characterize procurement systems in low- and middle-income countries. In a post-pandemic world, improving procurement of health products must remain central to countries’ efforts to maximize health outcomes—it will also ensure health systems are more resilient when the next outbreak hits.
This report aims to evaluate the effectiveness and fit of open contracting reforms to LMIC contexts and to provide
recommendations on how and when countries should pursue open contracting reforms. This objective was broken
down into the following questions on reform outcomes and reform drivers.
1. How advanced and comprehensive is the legal framework for open contracting? How did it evolve in the last 10-
15 years?
2. To what extent are the laws relating to public procurement transparency and accountability implemented? How
did the comprehensiveness and quality of publicly available government contracting data evolve in the last 10-15
years?
3. What is the political-economic context in which public procurement occurs? Who are the main actors in
government and civil society, what are their power relations and interests? Which actors have driven or blocked
open contracting reform?
4. Which conditions and institutional capacities have facilitated or hindered public procurement transparency
reform?
5. Which reform strategies have proved most successful and unsuccessful in which contexts? What were the
typical time frames and pathways for successful reform that can inform design of future advocacy strategies?
The primary claim of this Note is that restructuring existing political frameworks can combat procurement corruption on the local level. Specifically, this Note posits that legislative involvement in the procurement process — coupled with the addition of an independent, procurement policy board, charged with developing and reforming local procurement practices — would provide significant benefits to local procurement practices.
Morocco has been working in close co-operation with the OECD for several years as part of the Good Governance for Development in Arab Countries Initiative. The aim of this Initiative is to modernise public governance in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) through a programme divided into seven key areas: integrity and prevention of corruption in the public sector; human resource management; e-government and administrative simplification; regulatory quality; relations between national, regional and local authorities; management of public finance; public service delivery and public-private partnerships.
This Joint Learning Study addresses integrity in public procurement, following the adoption of the new regulations on public procurement by the Moroccan government in May 2007.
This set of concise guidelines is meant to provide an overview of the procurement process and to provide specific insight into commonly applicable articles and rules in order to enable health professionals to ascertain if the process has been followed properly prior to reaching a decision.
This report documents examples of the benefits of contract transparency: a 50 percent increase in
competition for government tenders in Slovakia, reduced variation and lower average prices in hospital supplies in Latin America, lower costs for social housing in France, the exposure of significant political party funding by sole-source contract winners in Georgia, and civil-society monitoring of a social development fund by a mining company in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Successfully fighting corruption requires widespread public engagement and pressure. But effective engagement doesn’t just happen; it is a creative and constructive process that involves planning strategic activities to inspire people to confront corruption as a major social, economic and political offence and a violation of human rights.
This Transparency International (TI) advocacy guide seeks to assist TI’s National Chapters and other civil society organisations through this process of:
1. Analysing problems, finding solutions and identifying stakeholders;
2. Defining the objectives and other building blocks of an advocacy plan;
3. Assessing risks and reviewing feasibility and sustainability;
4. Planning activities and linking them with resources; and
5. Checking how successful the advocacy plan has been.
Improved public service delivery begins with knowing whether the services offered are working as intended. But too often public service providers lack the means to solicit citizen feedback. When feedback is available, the data typically represents the interests of only a fraction of users. This is especially true in Nigeria where persistent underdevelopment of infrastructure, including roads, internet access, and electricity, constrains the ability of the country’s poor to provide feedback. Those who stand to gain the most from effective public services have the fewest opportunities to input on their design.
How a strategic understanding of current and potential users of city data—and their role in the data ecosystem—is helping New York City realize its promise of Open Data for All.
South Africans have witnessed in recent months of the Covid-19 pandemic how our procurement policies and laws can create opportunity for corrupt people, including government officials, to steal from the state’s purse.