Finance Minister Edward Scicluna said the government was planning a reform at the contracts department, suggesting this office might be turned into an agency.

Speaking during the presentation of the Public Contracts Review Board’s annual report, Prof. Scicluna said that while transparency and good governance would remain the most important aspect in public procurement, more efficiency was also a must.

He admitted there was a “flaw” in government procurement as not much monitoring occurred once the awarding process was over.

The minister acknowledged it was a problem that a multi-million euro contract with Vitals Global Healthcare had missed all the milestones agreed upon as part of the deal.

Pointing out that the deal was supposed to be monitored by seven committees, which should know what was going on, Prof. Scicluna agreed that the follow up of contracts had to be looked into more closely.

Evaluation committees deciding on tenders are not composed of the right competent people

“Yes, this is one of the points we need to tackle and is part of the reform we intend doing,” he said.

Public Contracts Review Board chairman Anthony Cassar said that although the work was being carried out efficiently, there was a problem that needed to be tackled.

“We are finding that some problems are caused because evaluation committees deciding on tenders are not composed of the right competent people having the right expertise,” he said.

The committees are all appointed by the government.

Dr Cassar said the problem had to be addressed because most of the appeals filed followed some technical deficiency on the evaluation committee’s part.

According to the report, about 175 appeals on public contracts were made last year.

Decision on revisions were made within 15 days from the appeal’s submission.

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