In spite of a long list of cases where ministries and State entities were criticised for not adhering to public procurement regulations, the Finance Minister yesterday insisted that there was no cause for alarm. Quoting from a recent EU study, he said that Malta had registered “big” improvements in recent years.
“Allegations of abuse will keep surfacing from time to time. In this respect the Contracts Department is doing its utmost [to combat such abuse],” Prof. Edward Scicluna said.
The Finance Minister was replying to questions from the Times of Malta after delivering the concluding speech at a conference marking the introduction of new public procurement regulations in three weeks’ time.
An Auditor General’s report published last December flagged numerous shortcomings in public procurement procedures across various ministries and State entities and agencies. These ranged from non-adherence to existing regulations by the National Celebrations Foundation within the Office of the Prime Minister, to cases of unauthorised payments to individuals and private entities, and in some instances a lack of checks and balances.
In each case,ministries must give an explanation. This is a culture which must be introduced
Asked for his reaction to these damning findings, the Finance Minister noted that it was the Auditor’s duty to scrutinise public accounts. He said that, in spite of all efforts to curb abuses, allegations of wrongdoing would keep cropping up.
“In each case, ministries must give an explanation. This is a culture which must be introduced in this country, as it would be wrong not to give an explanation whenever such remarks are made,” he said. While not committing himself if he was satisfied or not with the government’s performance in this respect, he said efforts were being made to train civil servants to become more vigilant.
In his address Prof. Scicluna outlined the main objectives of the new procurement regulations, saying they were meant to reduce the adjudicating time, opt for economies of scale to get better value and avoid having sole bidders for public contracts. He said public procurement accounted for about €300 million of the government’s annual expenditure.
The Finance Minister took solace from an EU benchmark report which ranked Malta’s performance above the European average.
Quoting from the findings of the 2014 benchmark report, he said that Malta’s overall performance was above average, at par with Nordic countries.
He said that improvement was registered in the duration of the adjudicating process, which had gone down from 190 days to 115 days in 2014. Nevertheless, he conceded there was still a long way to go to reach the 60-day target.
As for the changes, Prof. Scicluna said that the remit of a commercial sanctions tribunal set up last year within the Finance Ministry would be widened to blacklist any private company involved in money laundering, child labour and other serious crimes, for a five-year period.
In addition, the changes will also pave the way for a complete changeover to a digital procurement process by 2018.