Innovative procurement demands a culture shift – one that requires the placement of procurement as a key cornerstone of the strategic orientation of an organisation, rather than a mere transactional matter, said Tonio Fenech, parliamentary secretary in the Finance Ministry.
Addressing a seminar on innovative public procurement, Mr Fenech said that last July, the government adopted a comprehensive strategy to place research and innovation at the heart of the economy.
The strategy included 66 measures directed at creating both the demand and supply for research and innovation. One of the supply measures was the adoption of innovative public procurement.
Yesterday’s seminar was the first of a series of workshops organised by the Finance Ministry, in collaboration with the Contracts Division and the Malta Council of Science and Technology.
The aim of the workshops is to establish a proactive culture for the application of innovation procurement and the contracts division and MCST will be developing guidelines and best-practice methodologies in this regard.
Mr Fenech said that innovative procurement stemmed from two fundamental premises. Firstly, public procurement accounts for between 15 per cent and 18 per cent of any country’s GDP.
“This implies that the government has the necessary purchasing clout to shape and determine the type of products and services that it requires. It is pertinent to note that, historically, public procurement has played a strategic and often critical role in promoting the development of a particular technology area or industry. This has often led or resulted in the country gaining a regional or global strength and competitive advantage in the sector,” said Mr Fenech.
He said that while the EU and member states had recognised that traditional procurement has been restraining innovation, the search for the right approaches and methodologies to innovative procurement was still in its infancy.
Nevertheless, it was pertinent to note that the reform of EU procurement rules in 2004 provided for mechanisms that enabled innovative procurement.