Global Procurement Summit

Global Procurement Summit – New Delhi India, February 2017

Global Procurement Summit (GPS) 2017, organized by All India Management association (AIMA) with support of Government of India and the World Bank was concluded on 28 February 2017. The summit highlighted the importance of Procurement as a distinct stream of public administration and the transformation of procurement to become more strategic and technology dependent with theme of Good Procurement for Good Governance. The basic idea of having 2nd of the series of Global Procurement Summit in 2017 was to have it as a platform for knowledge sharing amongst the procurement exports, exposing newer trends and global practices and to exchange best practices on procurement around the globe.

The Summit held at New Delhi India on 27th -28thFebruary, 2017 attracted over 220 senior procurement policy makers and practitioners from over 10 countries. AIMA also launched the Certificate program in Dispute Resolution with technical support of the World Bank during the Summit.



Director General, AIMA, Ms Rekha Sethi, setting the background of the Summit to the delegates, called it a platform for policy makers, business leaders, academicians and procurement professionals to exchange notes and identify ways to improve the efficiency of procurement. She was supported in her assertion by the president of AIMA, Sunil Kant Munjal who emphasized on the importance of a good quality process and training of procurement officials which was absolutely essential especially when technology is also changing the way procurement functions nowadays. Mr Munjal welcome the honorable minister of Railways, Suresh Prabhu, and elaborated on how he has been at the front end of innovation and best practices in Public Procurement.

In his Inaugural address, the honorable minister, said he was very happy to see how AIMA is leading the thought process in not just the management space but also on some very key important issues that the country is facing, which directly concerns the citizens of India. He said GPS 2017 would be a step in putting a system in place in India to improvise the public procurement system. He requested AIMA and The World Bank along with the experts present in the summit to share concrete suggestions on how we can improve procurement and assured that these would be implement fully. He also released the digital souvenir. Mr. Felipe Goya, Practice Manager- Governance, The World Bank, setting the thematic context of the summit said the situation in India was diverse with a lot of progress in using ICT for procurement while many opportunities still existing for improvement. He stressed on the linkage between policy making and the use of information in the e-procurement database. His speech was followed by a special address by Mr. Ashwajit Singh, Managing Director, IPE Global Limited. In his address he also said procurement is like the foundation of a building and it needs to be good to build a strong and robust structure. The vote of thanks was extended by Dr. Raj Agrawal, Director- CME, All India Management Association.



In the first Plenary Session on Role of ICT in ensuring Good Governance chaired by Mr. Binoy Kumar, IAS Director General, Directorate General of Supplies & Disposals, all speakers - Ms. S.Radha Chauhan, Mr. Kalesh Kumar, Ms Lindsey Marchessault, Mr Anil Kumar Bhardwaj, Ms. Amita Sharma agreeing on the fact role of ICT in ensuring good governance is no more an option but a necessity as today there is a shift from compliance based mentality to performance based procurement. Mr. Kalesh Kumar laid the role of ICT in good procurement governance through four elements of Information, Networking, Education and Transaction and detailed the World Bank initiative www.procurementinet.org contributing to this very agenda. The importance of using Data was also emphasized upon.



In the second session chaired by Mr. Felipe Goya, Practice Manager- Governance, The World Bank, the speakers Mr. Sanjay Aggarwal, Mr Ashutosh Vajpayee, Ms Laura K Siegrist Fouche, and Ms. Christine Jackson elaborated on Procurement Reforms- Drivers and Barriers. Interestingly we saw two case studies here one from the Indian state of Rajasthan and other one from the Ukraine.

In the third session yesterday on Managing Disputes – Improving Procurement Outcomes chaired by Mr. Rajesh Bhushan, IAS, Joint Secretary, MoRD & Director General, NRRDA, we got a chance to hear about the best practices for Contractual Dispute Resolution, how to Reduce the prospect of Dispute occurrence, importance of Dispute Boards arbitration laws in India. At the end of this session AIMA launched Certificate course in Dispute Resolution in technical support with World Bank.



The second Day at the GPS 2017 summit started with the fourth plenary session on Improving transparency and accountability in procurement chaired by Mr S Shiva Kumar, CVO, BEL where all the speakers Ian Nightingale, Samir K Srivastava and Amit Agrahari, Ajay Gupta gave more examples on how transparency and accountability have been functioning in their respective and procurement models.



In the fifth plenary session on Innovative Practices in Public Procurement chaired by Dr. Vivek Joshi, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, the speakers Mr S K Chowdhury, Mr Rajesh Bhushan, Mr Siddharth Singh, and Ms Selvi Apoorva shared the different innovative interventions they had undertaken in public procurement at the states and central level which have greatly improved the scenario in public procurement in India. Mr. Joshi handed over the awards to the Runners up and second Runners up of the South Asia Procurement Innovation Awards launched by South Asia Public Procurement Network, World Bank, Asian Development Bank and Procurement iNET.



The last session of the summit on effective knowledge management in procurement chaired by Ramesh Kumar Sharma, a retired secretary, public procurement monitoring office, Nepal deliberated upon how important it is that good KM practices strengthen the procurement process. The speakers Mr. Dev Arora, Amitabh Datta, Lauren Ziegler and Amarendra Kumar discussed how Procurement professionals need to have demonstrated capacity to meet the stiff challenges of difficult risk management, procurement disaster, anti-competitive behavior of vendors, environmental and social issues.