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Review: Advancing Sustainable Public Procurement in Asia and the Pacific

Suranjali Tandon, Associate Professor, NIPFP, India

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Comments

  • The paper provides an overview of the initiatives and particularly financing mechanisms that have been taken to move towards more sustainable public procurement (SPP).
  • The paper links the infrastructure demand with the potential for SPP, which is a useful way to scale up sustainability initiatives
  • Although SPP still remains limited as only 9 countries implemented these in 2020
  • The key takeaways point to important aspects- integrating sustainability in national policies and strategies and measureable outcomes, as opposed to just compliance.

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Comments

  • The paper cites that 13-20% of the global GDP is contributed by public procurement which the authors suggest could help build sustainability into economic development. With governments spending close to that on social sector programs would it be relatively useful to suggest tagging of budgets to build accountability and then setting national targets(NZ), instead of mandating SPP?
  • The government can make sustainable public procurement but would this mean it would purchase relatively expensive products? What implications would this have for public finances? The previous question and this are important as they have implications for additional resource requirement.
  • Is there any guidance on what kinds of practices work better? Would a more stringent approach be necessary or the iterative approach in Korea be better?
  • Robust monitoring is key to success of SPP, is there a template for who will monitor so that governments are accurate and transparent? This is important if the governments are to publish outcomes that can be verified.
  • Can carbon credits/markets provide a mechanism to monitor and measure achievement?
  • Tax incentives are also public finance costs, do governments have the transparency and wherewithal to implement as there are fiscal targets?
  • It is of interest why the number if eco-labelled products declined in Korea after 2016 even though number of companies producing increased? There is an upper bound to product innovation or competition limits innovation?