Sustainable Public Procurement: Towards a low‐carbon economy

33 Sustainable Public Procurement: Towards a low carbon economy
hurdles in design of procurement of goods that have better
energy efficiency.
Nevertheless it is important to remember that the purpose of
revision of the GFR rules was to enable greater flexibility to
procurement managers to design processes and set up standards
while formulating specifications in a manner, which would
respond to present circumstances and newer developments. In
essence a procurement manager should be in a position to
exercise choice in responding to development of energy efficient
goods that are available in the market. The principle of “best
value for money” provides him the policy support to makes such a
choice. However if he is to make the choice he should also be
protected from censure from the CVC, acting only on the basis of
the fact that the choice of a more energy efficiency product
represents a departure from the business as usual processes
underlying the public procurement business. In that sense, the
CVC would therefore have to be sensitive to the demands of the
procurement process and also ensure that its guidelines do not
serve as an impediment to genuine cases of customization of the
specifications in order to take into consideration energy efficiency
criteria.
Ultimately the lack of a single procurement authority has been
one of the major hurdles in enabling the rationalization of the
procurement process. As has been seen above, the GFR are in the
nature of general guidelines and provides overall principles,
which should guide the design and implementation of the
procurement process. This has resulted in the modification of the
procurement processes in myriad ways by individual government
departments and public sector undertakings. This is not
necessary a regression, since the procuring entities are
sufficiently different to warrant minor modifications that reflect
their specific concerns. However to enable the incorporation of a
specific concerns like energy efficiency while designing
specifications, this lack of direction and oversight makes it
difficult to harmonize the procedural aspects f procurement in a
manner to provide for specific policy direction. Given that the
authority overseeing the implementation of the GFR is the
Controller and Auditor General’s office, whose oversight is
triggered only in an ex post situation of findings of grave
irregularities or misappropriation, there is lack of mandate to
provide for policy direction in the ex ante. Thus the CAG’s
oversight function is limited to that of ensuring financial
propriety. Further the CVC also functions primarily as an antigraft
agency, and although it does provide for policy directions on
T E R I Report No. 2007GL01