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 was created with the following audiences and objectives in mind:
● Public procurement officials, to increase understanding about the nature of the barriers WLB
face in public procurement markets, and to recommend potential solutions, including the
collection and use of data to inform strategies supporting GRP.
● Social policy design and implementation practitioners, to understand and incorporate
linkages between policies and initiatives that support women’s economic participation and
the procurement system.
● Entrepreneurial ecosystem actors (including but not limited to businesses development
service providers, investors, banks, women entrepreneurs’ networks), to help identify
challenges for WLBs and women entrepreneurs in accessing public procurement, which can
be used to inform GRP initiatives and programs.
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?
In 2015, Montreal took two significant steps towards greater transparency: it opened up a large portion of its contractual data and launched Vue sur les contrats, a visualization tool that allows users to dive deep into this information. This initiative demonstrated the the benefits of standardizing data, but it also highlighted the challenges associated with data quality and design choices that are inherent to such projects.
Reports presented by members of the Lawyers Council from 14 countries who have surveyed the landscape in each of their own countries and provided summaries of exceptional legal measures for crisis response, the conduct of procurement processes under such exceptions, and resultant corruption risks and actions to minimize such risks, including in respect of transparency obligations. This section also includes information as to initiatives developed by civil society organizations and other sectors to monitor government actions related to the pandemic, as well as public information about investigations of corruption into governmental actions related to the pandemic. Finally, the Lawyers Council presents a set of recommendations calling on the legal community to support anti-corruption efforts related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and recommendations for a critical policy focus on transparency and access to information, integrity and transparency in procurement practices, and citizen watchdogs and whistleblowers.
This booklet highlights some of the World Bank initiatives in the region, which we consider good examples of what can be done to strengthen state capacity and increase citizens’ trust in their government. The booklet contains a section on “Using Data Analytics in Public Procurement to Increase Efficiency and Identify Corruption Red Flags”.
Chapter 8 from Public Financial Management in Latin America : The Key to Efficiency and Transparency by the Inter-American Development Bank.
In recent years, the countries of Latin America have embraced reforms in public financial management and have made many important advances-however, many challenges remain. This book brings together IMF and IDB staff and representatives from 16 governments in the region to document these reforms, and to examine the experiences and lessons learned. It is a valuable resource for those looking at issues in public financial management.
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.
Blog by HIVOS outlining the importance of transparent procurement in Indonesia’s COVID-19 response.
Many MENA countries have been recently engaged in improving their public procurement systems, including by modernising their procurement policies and institutional frameworks, developing guidelines and building procurement professional capacity.
This report was published by the The MENA-OECD network.