Elements of public procurement reform and their effect on the public sector in lac
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JOPP-16-03-2016-B005 |
| Pages | 347-373 |
| Published date | 01 March 2016 |
| Date | 01 March 2016 |
| Author | Leslie Elizabeth Harper,Ana Cristina Calderon Ramirez,Jorge Enrique Muñoz Ayala |
| Subject Matter | Public policy & environmental management,Politics,Public adminstration & management,Government,Economics,Public Finance/economics,Texation/public revenue |
JOURNAL OF PUBLIC PROCUREMENT, VOLUME 16, ISSUE 3, 347-373 FALL 2016
ELEMENTS OF PUBLIC PROCUREMENT REFORM AND THEIR EFFECT ON THE
PUBLIC SECTOR IN LAC1
Leslie Elizabeth Harper, Ana Cristina Calderon Ramirez and
Jorge Enrique Muñoz Ayala*
ABSTRACT. Between 2007 and 2013, public procurement systems in Latin
America and the Caribbean under went a critical reform proc ess. However,
not much is known about the elements of reform and their effect on the
public sector. In order to assess this gap in knowledge, this study used an
institutional evaluation mult ivariate tool developed and carried out by the
Inter-American Development Bank called PRODEV. Based on a sample panel
of countries, effects on the development of public procurement systems
were calculated. The result s indicated that, of the three main areas of
procurement reform evaluated, the creation of a procurement agency2 had
the largest impact. At the same time, evidence was found that backed the
hypothesis that creating these agencies had a positive effect on the
perception of public sector performance.
INTRODUCTION
Public Procurement Reform (PPR) in Latin America and the
Caribbean (LAC) has been part of the transformation of the public
sector movement that started in the 1990s in the region. Although
PPR was originally conceived as just a small piece of broader
overarching reforms, in areas such as public financial management
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* Leslie Elizabeth Harper, M.A Latin America Studies, University of London.
Her research interests include public procurement reform and
modernization, with a focus on the Caribbean. Ana Cris tina Calderon
Ramirez, Ph.D. candidate, Maastricht University. Her research interests
include public sector reform, public procureme nt and applied institutional
theory. Jorge Enrique Muñoz Ayala, MSc. in Economics, National University
of Colombia. His research intere sts are in applied econometrics and
statistics.
Copyright © 2016 by Pracademics Press
348 HARPER, CALDERON & MUÑOZ
or anti-corruption and transparency, after the year 2000, PPR gained
in relevance in its own right. As countries increasingly realized the
potential economic and strategic value of public procurement, PPR
grew from being perceived as a mere administrative task that needed
to be streamlined, to a stand-alone reform area that while connected
to the overall PFM system, was a sector with its own agenda and
particularities. This is particularly the case given that it is one of the
few functions in government that is truly at the intersection of public
policy, citizen services and the private sector, with all the political and
technical challenges that those factors involve.
Two decades have passed since these efforts began in LAC, and
since then there have been great strides in the modernization and
reform of public procurement systems. These advances have
included the creation of e-procurement platforms, the establishment
of more comprehensive legal frameworks, the professionalization of
procurement officer, use of procurement to promote social objectives,
and the inclusion of green criteria in tendering opportunities. PPRs in
the region have been analyzed extensively, including for example the
impetus for reform, issues and constraints affecting the reforms,
partial evaluations of outputs that these reforms aimed to
accomplish, and specific country case studies. However, little has
been written to identify and analyze the outcomes of the reforms and
impact that such reforms have had on the perception of public sector
performance.
This paper seeks to address those gaps in knowledge by
providing a conceptual framework for understanding the context
under which public procurement reforms are carried out and
examining what the authors are calling for the purposes of this paper
“first generation public procurement reform elements.” This includes:
i) legal framework for public procurement, ii) procurement agency and
iii) electronic government procurement (eGP). The impact of those
elements are then analyzed as part of procurement reforms that were
carried out over the 2007-2013 period and their impact on public
sector performance through a set of indicators that will be described
in Section 3. This paper is not meant to be a comprehensive review of
the Public Sector Reform (PSR) literature; however, it is the first study
that examines whether or not there is evidence of a relationship
between PPR and improved performance in the public sector.
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