The Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC) has urged public institutions in the country to make full disclosure of their procurement data to the public.

The call was made at a workshop attended by representatives of civil society organisations (CSOs), media, and district assemblies.

Speaking at the workshop, the GACC Communications Officer, Faustina Djabatey, said data gathered via the Public Procurement Authority’s (PPA) website showed that some public institutions were not providing the required data.

‘Making procurement data available will enable civil society organisations, the media and the general public to subject such procurements to a thorough scrutiny, and if there are any red flag, it will be raised before the contracts are even awarded’, she said.

Djabatey further said that even though some of these public institutions awarded contracts for some projects, there was no information on the tender processes, owners of the contracted firms and how those contracts were awarded.

She said that this had led to issues of conflict of interest, stalling of some projects as well as improper location of projects.

Djabatey urged other CSOs to include in their various programmes the disclosure of procurement data to drum home the need for proactive disclosure of procurement data.

For the Monitoring and Evaluation Officer at GACC, Michael Djisu, he also urged public institutions to adopt internationally accepted procurement standards such as the Open Contract Partnership (OGP) as part of their plans in disclosing procurement data.

The workshop was organised by GACC for members of the CSOs, media, district assemblies, PPA and other public institutions.

It formed part of the GACC’s ‘From Disclosure to Impact: Deepening and Broadening Open Contracting in Africa’ project.

Source: News Ghana

Photo source: News Ghana