Fourth South Asia Region Public Procurement Conference to be held in SL

The Fourth South Asia Region Public Procurement Conference (SARPPC) will be held in Colombo and Kandy from February 20 to 23under the Theme “Electronic Government Procurement (e-GP) in South Asia: Achievements, Opportunities and Challenges.”

The Conference will be hosted by Department of Public Finance, Ministry of Finance and is co‐sponsored by the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and Islamic Development Bank.

President Maithripala Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe and Minister of Finance, Ravi Karunanayake are among the top level local and foreign speakers at the conference.

This annual learning, knowledge and experience sharing event is organized under the auspices of the South Asia Region Public Procurement Network (SARPPN) which comprises senior public procurement officials from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

Many countries in the region have progressed significantly in terms of Public Financial Management Reforms in general and Procurement reforms in particular. Sri Lanka is also in the process of number of governance reforms. Public Financial Management Bill, Right to information Law, Financial Sector Reforms, Procurement Reforms and PPP Regulations are name to few. In view of these reform initiatives SAR conference would provide invaluable opportunity for the country to strengthen its governance framework with best practices used in developed countries, the Finance Ministry said in a statement.

The theme of the Fourth Conference is of strategic importance to the South Asian countries as they are at different stages of introduction and operationalization of electronic procurement. E-GP makes public procurement more strategic and serves as an effective innovation to institute procurement reforms with boosted performance in terms of efficiency, transparency, competition, fairness and value for money.

The event will be attended by about 100 participants. In addition to the heads of public procurement, participants will include over 60 high‐level government officials responsible for public procurement policymaking; oversight agencies; and representatives from several Development Partners active in Sri Lanka.