By Emmanuel Joseph
Individuals and companies supplying goods and services to the Government have to register under a revamped public procurement system that Minister in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs Ryan Straughn says will make doing business with the government hassle-free.
The e-procurement system, Bonfire, is in a pilot phase that runs from April 1 to September 30.
“This is about making it easier to do business with government,” said Straughn who spoke about the transition from a paper-based procurement system to an electronic platform at a training workshop last week.eg that if you wanted to provide services to the Parliament of Barbados and you register with the Government Procurement Department through Bonfire as a supplier, and you then decided you wanted to provide some service to the National Assistance Board or some other entity, you do not now have to go and present the same information to those entities when they put out a specific tender. Therefore, this process allows everybody to be able to streamline what they are doing,” he explained.
Straughn said public officers who will manage the system have received intense training and suppliers have been sensitised.
Minister Straughn said the six-month pilot phase of Bonfire will allow all existing suppliers “to register and to get a feel for what is happening”.
“Ministries and departments will be putting out things on Bonfire in order to test their internal processes because as you would appreciate, this would mean a change of process for government and it also means a change of process for those persons who are accustomed to supplying government.
“And, therefore, over the next six months, as departments and suppliers ease their way into navigating the system you are going to see an acceleration of the e-procurement cycle. The bid information will also still be advertised in the paper because, over a certain threshold, you have to put things into the public space in terms of official tenders,” Straughn explained.
He urged all Barbadians interested in supplying the Government through the Procurement Department, formerly known as Central Purchasing, to register.
“Supplier registration is important because it is a single sign-on process. You submit your information, it is stored in the system…. You have the opportunity on registration to determine if you want to see everything that the Government is putting on or just the very thing that you are interested in with respect to the process,” the minister said.
“Management of procurement process will now be much more efficient. The officers recognised the ability to cascade information instantaneously and to manage the process through which the information is sent to the registered suppliers, makes their internal efforts a little easier. They can now take queries and respond to those queries all in one go without having to screen different calls and different sets of communication. That as a value added is going to be something that is particularly important,” Straughn pointed out.
He said Bonfire will be fully implemented by October 1 and procurement will therefore be online only from that date.
Straughn noted that local entities registered on Bonfire will have the opportunity to secure additional business and jobs outside of Barbados.
“If there is an opportunity in St Lucia, Jamaica, whatever that meets the criteria, that opportunity will be published on Bonfire for the entity overseas, and you being a supplier here in Barbados will get that additional information through the portal that also allows you to see whether or not you want to participate in procurement outside of Barbados,” Minister Straughn told Parliament.
emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb
