Friday, November 24, 2006

Mission accomplished!

This took too long to post but as the saying goes, "Better late than never". The Team has completed the last batch of the training on the roll-out of the Generic Procurement Manuals. We arranged with Punta Villa a single venue as the confirmed participants were just a little over 150 but the actual registrants (most of them came later) turned out to be 230 plus. So we had to to split the participants into two groups with those coming from Antique in one group, and the other from Negros Occidental and the local water districts.

What made this last batch special was the presence of two personnel from the GPPB Tecnical Support Office who came to observe and distributed survey questionnaires about how we conduct the training. I'll make a summary of the participant's impression in a separate post later.

With the provinces, cities and municipalities and some local water districts done, we are setting our sight next on the barangays whom we feel equally need the training. We have already sent out the invitations to barangays in Iloilo City and those in Province of Iloilo. Target date is December 12-13 and 14-15.

Thursday, November 09, 2006

One down, one more to go!

We've just concluded the third batch of our series of trainings on the Roll-out of the Generic Procurement Manuals. Venue was at Punta Villa. The turn out of participants was overwhelming - around 285 of them coming from the municipalities in the Provinces of Aklan, Antique, Capiz, Guimaras, and Iloilo, the City of Victorias and also from the different Local Water Districts. We had to divide the participants into two groups and the trainors, the six of us namely: Atty. Panes of DILG, Jun Cabahug and Daisylyn Tavarro of COA, Tony Arbis, PBO of Capiz, and Mae Chua and myself from DBM - took turns discussing our assigned topics and even arguing with the eager participants.

The training went on seamlessly, thanks to our hardworking, competent facilitators, Vir Abonador (MBO of Duenas) and Annie Bedonia (MBO of Anilao), as well as our ever pleasing secretariat from the Iloilo Provincial Budget Office headed by PBO Elen Lim and her assistant Daday Depakakibo.

The last batch scheduled on November 14-16 promises to be a special one as two staff from the GPPB will be coming over to observe how we conduct the training. With participants coming from the municipalities of Antique and Negros Occidental and the rest of the water districts in the region, we look forward to an equally bigger turn out and interaction as the recently concluded one. I'll give a brief rundown on this right after the training.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Fast tracking GPRA implementation . . .

With the issuance by the Government Procurement Policy Board (GPPB) of the Generic Procurement Manuals (GPM) and the expected completion of the trainings by year-end, we expect a smooth sailing roll-out of the GPM.

Yet another major development that will ensure the effective implementation of the Government Procurement Reform Act (GPRA) - that is, to make procurement rules more responsive and realistic to the situations obtaining in the different government procurement levels - was the issuance by the Office of the President of a Memorandum dated 23 August 2006, "Authorizing the GPPB to Promulgate Rules and Regulations in Carrying out the Provisions of RA 9184", without need of Presidential approval.

It seems the Memorandum has already bore positive fruit with the issuance by the GPPB of three resolutions:

* Resolution No. 04-2006 - added another type of Negotiated Procurement (Item h,
Section 53 of IRR-A where the ABC is P50,000 and below;

* Resolution No. 07-2000 - substituting the eligibility requirement of prospective
bidder on the "single completed similar contract with value of at least 50% of
the ABC, subject to certain conditions; and

* Resolution No. 14-2006 - shortening the period of the different prescribed steps
in the bidding process, among them the advertisement/posting for only seven
calendar days from original period of 14 calendar days

Said resolutions can be downloaded from the GPPB website. We expect that more Amendments or refinements to the procurement rules will be issued in the future.

Last 2 batches of GPM Trainings starts Nov. 7th


The Regional Composite Tainors' Team (RCTT) will hold the remaining two batches of trainings on the roll-out of the Generic Procurement Manuals on November 7-9; and 14-16. Venue is at Punta Villa Resort, Iloilo City.

While originally intended for procurement officials (BAC members, Secretariat and TWGs) of LGUs, the Team decided to invite those from Local Water Districts in view of numerous requests from the latter to attend the training as well.

Training modules and program can be downloaded from the DBM Regional Office web site.

Welcome Note!

This Blog is designed for government public procurement practitioners in the Philippines.