Government contracts are being processed more efficiently with the time taken to adjudicate tenders down from 250 days in 2013 to 115 days, principal permanent secretary Mario Cutajar said.

Addressing a seminar for SMEs as part of the public service week, Mr Cutajar said the improvement was registered as a result of efforts to make the contracts department more efficient following the change in government.

He said the time taken to process tenders was now in line with the EU average which was 100 days.

He also spoke on efforts to increase the use of electronic procurement, saying that some 26,000 businesses used this method last year. This represented a threefold increase over 2013, he said.

Moreover, a new customer care service introduced in October had already received some 1,700 enquiries.

Mr Cutajar also spoke of plans to set up a compliance unit to ensure that procurement rules were always followed to avoid delays caused by administrative mistakes.