Five-day Training Workshop on Public Procurement, Barbados

Between the 18th and 22nd of April 2016, twenty-one participants from the OECS and Barbados attended a training workshop on Procurement held at the CSME Secretariat building in Bridgetown (Barbados).

Attendees included a mixture of senior policy officials, a number of whom are on the Regional Task Force on Government Procurement, experienced procurement officials and some officials who had been fairly recently appointed. There were also participants from the supply community.

Dr. Stephen Woolcock, a senior lecturer in international relations at the London School of Economics and head of LSE’s International Trade Policy Unit, facilitated this workshop along with regional procurement expert, Mr. Adrian Chin (Experts of Equinoccio Consortium).

The course covered the a wide range of material over the course of five days that included the economics of procurement that explored the aims of public procurement; the evolution of international best practice that provided a brief historical background on how the current norms of international best practice were shaped; the procurement cycle, from annual plans for procurement through to contract management; the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the EU and CARIFORUM and the CSME FRIP and other related initiatives in regional integration; and a panel discussion on day five that involved an intensive exchange of views on the status and challenges facing the reform of public procurement in the participating countries.

This training course was an output of the CARIFORUM/EU Capacity Building Project which is funded under the 10th EDF. The project’s overall objective is to support CARIFORUM Member States’ beneficial integration in the world economy. Specifically, it seeks to help member states to implement their EPA commitments in the areas of Competition, Procurement and Customs and Trade Facilitation.

The project is implemented by a consortium led by Equinoccio (Spain) which includes the London School of Economics, SGS and Maastricht School of Management.

Published On: April 18, 2016|