ANAMBRA GOVERNMENT HOLD 2-DAY TRAINING FOR SMEs ON PUBLIC PROCUREMENT ACTIVITIES IN ANAMBRA STATE NIGERIA AS A RESULT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC LOCKDOWN AND OTHER EMERGENCIES AND INCREASED PARTICIPATION OF SMEs IN CONTRACT BIDDING. (September 28th & 29th, 2020)

…emphasis on the need to accommodate SMEs in Government Procurement Process

By Bona Ogbonna

Presentations at the 2-day training on public procurement process organized by the Anambra State Bureau of Public Procurement for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in government procurement process was held in two batches (28th and 29th September, 2020)

The General Manager, Anambra State Bureau of Public Procurement, Chief Melie Onyejepu, in his presentation said the objective of the training was to keep SMEs abreast of development in the state public procurement process to enable them participate more due to the negative effect COVID-19 had on businesses especially SMEs.

According to Onyejepu, the State Government under the administration of Chief Willie Obiano believes that accountability must be entrenched in the system, and thus it is determined to get the process going. As part of this, the State Government has already launched an Open Procurement Portal and also plans to implement E-Procurement process before the end of 2020.

In a presentation entitled, "Introduction to Procurement Guidelines to increase SMEs participation in Government Contracts” and “Conduct of Public Procurement activities in Anambra State as a result of the covid-19 pandemic lockdown and other emergencies” one of the facilitator explained that there is need for all procuring entities in the State participating in procurement that responds to the COVID-19 pandemic, to ensure transparency, accountability, value-for-money and integrity in all their procurement proceedings.

This, according to him, is due to the fact that the procurements to be executed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic will generally fall under Emergency Procurement method and that bidders “can submit bids as attachment to email, and the bid/quotation must be password protected and read only”.

He also mentioned that these new guidelines were developed to ensure that SME’s that can supply items listed as COVID-19 items in the revised budget can be part of the procurement process.

Continuing, he listed barriers to SMEs participation in Go been me not Procurements, to include; value of contracts being too high for SMEs to participate due to inability of SMEs to meet financial (cashflow, average turnover) and similar experience requirements; tight deadlines for preparation of bids; lack of knowledge of bidding opportunities in the MDAs, and suggested solutions including that SMEs should be encouraged to participate as joint ventures and subcontractors.

Another facilitator, drew attention of participants to the common errors of SMEs in Public Procurement Procedures which includes not properly studying the bidding documents requirements/technical specifications, failure to request for clarification of bidding documents /untimely submission of the request for clarification, failure to follow up on notices of bidding opportunities, and affirmed that the latter can be overcome by daily monitoring of notices on the states, and/or PPAs’ website or the e-Procurement portal and requesting for clarification using the Procurement Agency contact email.

At the end of the event participants asked various questions and also commended the Public Procurement Agency for organizing event of this nature for SMEs in the State.