Liberia – FINANCING

The World Bank grants financing to the Contracts and Concessions Commission 

The Spring 2024 meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank was a success for Liberia’s Public Procurement and Concessions Commission. At the meeting, the head of the Commission, Bodger Scott Johnson, obtained additional funding of $250,000 from the World Bank to support efforts to digitize public procurement in his country. The additional funding is intended to increase the initial budget of 2.9 million dollars approved by the World Bank as part of the Governance Reform and Accountability Transformation (GREAT) project, to support the deployment of the electronic public procurement (e-GP) system …

The head of Liberia’s Public Procurement and Concessions Commission (PPCC), Bodger Scott Johnson, has secured an additional $250,000 in funding from the World Bank to support Liberia’s
ongoing public procurement digitization efforts. The PPCC boss made the breakthrough at the 2024 Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group (WBG) in the United States of America. During these engagements, Johnson met and held high-level discussions with senior World Bank officials, including the Regional Director for Ghana, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

The additional funding is intended to increase the initial budget of $2.9 million approved by the World Bank for the Governance Reform and Accountability Transformation (GREAT) project, to support the roll-out of the electronic public procurement (e-GP) system and to increase transparency and accountability in the public procurement system through the implementation of the e-GP system, with a focus on strengthening procurement capacity at county level.

The roll-out will include interfaces with the Business Registration System to check supplier status, an SMS notification gateway for confirmations, electronic tax payments, a gateway system to check tax status attestation and the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) based at the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning (MFDP).

The project will also fund the roll-out of the e-procurement system to a number of government institutions, including the county’s service centers, and will also fund the development of a sustainable procurement policy and implementation roadmap, procurement regulations, manuals and standard procurement documents.

As part of the agreement, the project will also fund capacity building and change management for compliance monitoring and green procurement, as well as the provision of IT equipment and
peripherals, website updates, workshops and seminars for stakeholders.

In November 2023, the Public Procurement and Concessions Commission (PPCC) signed a contract with a software developer, European Dynamics, for the supply, installation, configuration, deployment and maintenance of the electronic public procurement (e-GP) system on a Saas (Software as a Service) model. The contract represents the first phase of the project, worth five hundred and sixty-three thousand five hundred US dollars ($563,500.00). This phase includes the development, installation, configuration and deployment of the system in six selected Liberian government institutions. This phase of the project is also funded by the World Bank through the Public Financial Management Reform for Institutional Strengthening (PFMRSP) project based at the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning (MFDP). The PFMRSP project is due to end in October 2024, but will be replaced by theGREAT project.