The Procurement Department within the Ministry of Finance and Economic Management will host the first ‘Supplier Engagement Forum’ in December.
The forum will be conducted on Thursday, December 5, 2019 at the Montserrat Cultural Centre from 1:00p.m. to 3:00p.m. The aim of the forum is to provide information on current and future projects in the Government of Montserrat, and the new procurement regulations which came into force on September 1, 2019.
Head of Procurement, Harjinder Jutle explained that these engagement forums are standard and best practice, and are necessary to ensure suppliers understand how to bid on government projects. “It is something that the ministry wanted to do for a while, we need to know about people’s ability to bid for opportunities and improve the processes to support the bidding process. If we want to make sure that suppliers can respond to services we require, then we need to have a continuous dialogue with them,” expressed Ms. Jutle.
She further noted that it is an opportune time to begin the regular engagement process, since the new regulations are now in place. The Head of Procurement added, “We want to make sure we can support local suppliers to go through a simple quote process, which has been introduced in the new regulations, and which will fast track the process, instead of filling out a large document as was the case for previous tender forms.”
The supplier engagement forums will be conducted on a monthly basis going into different communities and will be conducted at various times.
Interested individuals and organisations are invited to attend the first forum on Thursday, December 5 and to engage in open and honest discussions with the team about how the process works.
