MONTEGO BAY, St James — Minister of Finance and the Public Service Dr Nigel Clarke is anticipating that an award system for civil servants involved in the delay-plagued procurement process will help boost efficiency.

“Another soft change that we will make is to ensure that we institute, for the very first time, the Government of Jamaica Procurement Awards. This is gonna be big business, it is gonna be like Grammy Awards,” the finance minister said.

He was speaking, Tuesday, on day one of the three-day Office of Public Procurement Policy Elevate Procurement Conference being held at the Montego Bay Convention Centre in St James.

“Procurement is big business and we’re going to make sure it is celebrated as big business. What gets measured gets done, what gets awarded is what people pursue. We’re going to ensure that you are incentivised by these awards, to make sure that for your department, your unit, your ministry, your agency, you are best in practice as far as public procurement is concerned,” Clarke added.

Earlier in his speech he had expressed concern about the intolerable failure rate of the procurement process, mostly for large Government contracts.

“When we examine the procurement system we realise that, in particular for large procurements, we have more than a tolerable rate of procurement failure. Sometimes there’s failure even before an award. Meaning, you go all the way through a procurement and realise, nine months later, that you have to do it again. Anybody knows of that experience? It’s common across the Government,” Clarke said.

“And then we have the failures where an award is made and the supplier cannot deliver and you have to do it again. Now who suffers as a result of this? Who suffers? The people of Jamaica. And we end up with unintended consequences from these kinds of occurrences,” he added.

It is an issue that has been a source of concern for many in and outside of the Andrew Holness-led Administration and the Opposition People’s National Party. On Tuesday, Clarke conceded that “we are experiencing tensions in our society around the issue of procurement”. However, he sought to put a positive spin on the issue, saying it was an indication of the country’s economic strength.

“Fifteen years ago, or whatever, when Jamaica is constrained and in great financial distress and difficulty, there’s nobody worried about procurement apart from the fact that there were violations here or there and we had to reform this system. But nobody was worried about it from the point of view of getting stuff through. Because the opportunity did not really exist. Our priority back then would have been to make sure that we can meet next month’s bills… so to speak,” the finance minister said of years when the People’s National Party was in power.

“Having worked hard on our macroeconomic reforms, and Jamaica being in a position where stability has been entrenched, and we have a stable fiscal trajectory and macroeconomic variables that are positive, the opportunity exists over the next decade or so to completely remake our society,” Clarke added.

He noted that the good news is the Office of Public Procurement is aware of the challenges and has been “working to resolve the issues”.

“We know that today we have an electronic procurement system which allows us to measure procurement from start to finish because everything is clocked and we can see with visibility and transparency what takes up time along the way the path of procurement. There are some hard changes that we’ll make, as I’ve announced in my budget presentation,” Clarke said.