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In 2011, the World Bank announced its intention to conduct a holistic review and reform of its procurement framework. This reform was intended to ensure that its procurement system, which is the means through which the Bank disburses developmental loans and grants is in line with modern trends in procurement, is flexible enough to respond to unforeseen challenges and is coherent. This paper examines both how Bank procurement has evolved since the first formal regulations were issued in 1964 and the implications of the recent reforms for the Bank and its borrowers. Readers will see that ongoing reforms evidence a significant change for the Bank's approach to procurement and its relationship with its borrowers and will dramatically affect the way the Bank-funded procurements are conducted.

Between 2007 and 2013, public procurement systems in Latin America and the Caribbean underwent a critical reform process. 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 multivariate 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 results 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.

Nearly $200 billion a year is funneled through the federal procurement system to buy everything from paper clips to stealth fighters. This procurement system can be thought of as an oscillating pendulum as it swings from one extreme of unresponsiveness to mission needs to the other extreme of hypersensitivity to mission. Out of a sense that the procurement pendulum had swung too far towards overregulation, two major procurement reform laws were passed: the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994 and the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996. Many observers suggest that these two laws have led to a revolution in the way the government buys. Are these reforms permanent? The view here is they are not because of various political forces.

The purpose of the paper is to examine features and impact of recent reforms introduced by the Philippines government to deal with the longstanding shortcomings in its procurement system.

The research for the paper is based on reports by international organizations, official documents of the Philippines government, surveys by international and domestic organizations, interviews with relevant officials and media reports.

The findings show that the reforms have focused on fostering competition, increasing transparency, standardizing procedures, enhancing end‐product quality and contractor reliability, ensuring proper planning and budgeting, combatting corruption, and strengthening accountability. These reforms were intended to create a procurement system more in line with international best practices. However the paper shows that the impact has been less than promised. This is due to limitations of certain provisions of the reforms and weaknesses in both implementation and in the accountability of the procuring entities. A key factor in undermining the reforms is widespread corruption, which continues to affect many aspects of the procurement system. The article identifies two important and related reasons for such failings: elite capture of the government and bureaucracy by a powerful network of business leaders from well‐established landed families, who have close links with the political establishment; and second, a long‐established culture of informal influence in the Philippine state bureaucracy (what may be termed the informal bureaucracy), which has been used to maximum effect by the elite network of business leaders. As a result, this network has been able to influence the reforms to serve its own interests and ensure its continued dominance of the procurement market.

The value of the paper is to show how administrative reforms, no matter how well formulated they are, may be readily undermined in the process of implementation by elite groups able to influence government bureaucracy through an informal culture.

This exploratory article examines the issue of state government procurement. It uses original survey data to create a measure of reformed state procurement practices, as suggested by the literature, and explores the ability of several variables from the state policy literature to explain observed differences in state procurement. Findings suggest that the states’ procurement practices possess varying degrees of reform characteristics, that interest group diversity, legislative professionalism, results-oriented management, and regional effects each have significant relationships to state procurement practices, and that several “classic” explanations of state policy are not significantly related to state procurement practices. One implication is that procurement, like other forms of state administrative policy, may not be readily explained by widely utilized theories of state policy.

Despite the economic transformation that the various countries in Southeast Asia have undergone, serious weaknesses have persisted in the area of public procurement. These include fragmented procurement procedures; the lack of professional procurement expertise; the absence of open, competitive tendering, especially for foreign suppliers; widespread corruption; and the lack of transparency. In recent years, limited progress has been made in reforming public procurement but all too often the reforms have been inadequate and have not had the desired impact so that shortcomings still persist. In light of these failings, the paper will highlight the twin challenges facing most of the states of the region: viz. the need to reinforce the recent procurement reforms and to translate them into actual practices.

In most countries procurement is undervalued compared to the attention paid to other key areas of Public Sector Reforms. Ghana represents a case in point. Under the health reforms in Ghana, the Ministry of Health and its partners (donors, financing institutions and the private sector) recognized the importance of procurement in its Medium-Term Health Sector Strategy for Ghana 1997 to 2001. With the aid of an external consultant, using a highly participatory approach in the development, training, and the implementation of new structures and procedures, good results have been achieved. Although work is ongoing and important challenges still need to be addressed, the authors argue that the new procurement structures now in place can serve as an example of a standardized support system for health reforms.

Public procurement frameworks in developed and developing countries alike are recognised as being characterised by an unstable tension between the public expectations of transparency and accountability, and of efficiency and effectiveness of resource management. This conformance - performance tension, manifest throughout a complex procurement environment, is further destabilised by conflicting stakeholder interests at the political, business, community and management levels and exacerbated by competing claims between executives, lawyers, technologists and politicians for lead roles in this arena. The application of new technology in this discipline offers a qualified potential to substantially resolve these tensions. However, the application of technology is itself at risk from a lack of understanding about the nature of its impact and the wider political dimensions of professionalism in public procurement.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the performance of the traditional procurement approach (TPA) under Ghana's procurement reform and explore if other possible procurement strategies could help to improve value for money in the Ghanaian public sectors. The fundamental questions to be addressed are: “Is the procurement reform addressing the deficiencies in the public sector procurement?”; “Are clients and professionals satisfied with the present procurement system?”; “What are the possible alternatives?”; and “What procurement selection criteria should be adopted?”.

To answer the above questions, an extensive literature review was conducted which provides the background to public procurement reform and reveals the status of the TPA in the public sector. Based on the outcomes of the literature review, three rounds of questionnaire surveys and face‐to‐face discussions were undertaken. The targeted population was carefully selected from different sectors of the industry and regions of the country.

The results of the study reveal the deficiencies in contractors’ performance arising from the use of TPA with a focus on time, budget, buildability and relationships among participants. It also ranks the criteria for procurement selection and suggests the D & B method as the most favourable alternative procurement strategy. Suggestions were made in the area of tendering processes, collaborative working, contractors’ competence, government's work efficiency, and whole‐life performance criteria.

This study evaluates the TPA performance after Ghana's procurement reform in 2003 and provides guidelines to the industry and government for further procurement reform aimed at improving value for money.

This research provides a systematic study on the public procurement reform and the TPA adopted in Ghana's public sector. The essential problems associated with the TPA in the industry are identified and analyzed, the procurement selection criteria are examined and an alternative procurement approach is postulated.

In November 1999, the Japanese Fair Trade Commission took legal action against participants in bids for oil delivery work ordered by the Self-Defense Forces. Then, in September 2000, the Korean Fair Trade Commission took legal action against participants in bids for oil delivery work ordered by the Korean Ministry of National Defense. These actions were not related, though there are similarities between the cases, each of which involves oil delivery companies obtaining special procurement privileges through deals with national security authorities. Study of these cases led to speculation as why the industry is conductive to collusion. According to the study three important results were recognized: Several measures in the plan for Japanese and Korean procurement reform were then analyzed. The implementation can clarify issues that are important for eradicating the participantsyʼ incentives for collusion.