A 14-member National Task Force on Sustainable Public Procurement, was on Wednesday launched in Accra to steer government's efforts at ensuring transparency and accountability in the public procurement system.
The launch follows the signing of an agreement on promoting sustainable Public Procurement during President John Evans Atta Mills' visit to Switzerland in August this year.
Sustainable Public Procurement considers social and environmental criteria apart from economic requirements in the procurement process for the selection of suppliers.
Speaking at the launch of the task force, Mr Fifi Kwetey, Deputy Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, said sustainable public
procurement would encourage compliance to "stand-alone" regulations on energy efficiency standards, pesticides control and management, reduction in green house gas emissions and labour practices.
He said the programme sought in the long-term to help achieve value for money, sustain economic development, and reduce harmful emission and waste generation as well as accelerate achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.
Mr Samuel Sallas-Mensah, Chief Executive Officer of Public Procurement Authority (PPA), said public procurement formed a large chunk of the national budget and the manner in which services were delivered affected not only the economy but also the environment and society.
He said an effective procurement system, therefore, was important and critical to achieving growth and poverty reduction goals.
The Task Force is made up of key stakeholders from civil society, Ghana
Trades Union Congress, Industry, Commerce, Standard Oversight Bodies, Environment Protection Agency, and Local Government, Institutions of Engineers and Architects as well as the academia.
It has the mandate to lead the process in introducing sustainable public procurement at all levels of Government, Ministries, Departments and
Agencies as well as Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies.
The agreement signed between Ghana and the Swiss Confederation in August provided approximately 2.7 million-dollar grant to support the PPA to
enhance the principles of transparency, accountability and sustainability in public procurement through strengthening of the monitoring and evaluation system.
This is the second phase of Switzerland's support to PPA.
In the first phase, which began in 2003, Switzerland through its State Secretariat for Economic Affairs provided technical assistance to the PPA.
This is to enable PPA to develop a procurement Monitoring and Evaluation tool, called the Public Procurement Model of Excellence (PPME), which is used by the PPA to collect data and assess the level of compliance and performance of Ghana's procurement entities.