Access to public procurement: Towards a strategic and operational alignment of actors in the social and solidarity economy

The Ministry of Microfinance and the Social and Solidarity Economy (Mess), in partnership with the regulatory authority for public procurement (Arcop), carried out, Thursday, January 29, in Dakar, the launching ceremony of a workshop on access to public procurement for actors in the Social and Solidarity Economy. The meeting made it possible to promote strategic and operational alignment of stakeholders in public procurement.

Create strategic and operational alignment in order to position the ministry as a model for the integration of Ess into public procurement. This is the objective of the two-day workshop opened in Dakar by the Ministry of Microfinance.

This workshop also aims to train, inform and share means to overcome the difficulties encountered by these actors, particularly in terms of regulation and organization.

For Doctor Mustapha Djité, Director General of Arcop, the difficulties identified include a lack of training and organization, requiring intermediation for common participation in ordering procedures financed by the State.

It is with this in mind that its services have produced a guide to explain how these actors can more easily access public procurement.

“In addition, I have set up a technical assistance office to help stakeholders prepare their files and participate in calls for tenders. This office, functional and run by specialists, aims to inform stakeholders of market opportunities and support them in the procedure,” informed Moustapha Djité.

Still according to the director, this support, in addition to financial support for standardization, is part of a dynamic of territorialization of public procurement, in connection with the creation of territorial centers in Senegal.

Speaking, Dr Alioune Dione, Minister of Microfinance and the Social and Solidarity Economy, recalled that his department has put in place instruments to facilitate access to public procurement.

“It is in this sense that the first instrument at our disposal is first and foremost approval which is the first identification criterion to benefit from this public procurement opportunity. We must remember that they went from three to more than a thousand under our magisterium,” recalled Alioune Dione.

Continuing, he reassured that this speed can be explained by the fact that the 5% of the public order intended for the Ess will increase to more than one hundred billion CFA francs.

The minister also specified that the gender issue was very well taken into account because most of the actors in the social solidarity economy are women.

“I am working so that we have an equitable trend, at least fifty percent women and fifty percent men in the social and solidarity economy sector. Because, as you see, most organizations are female. This is why we now want to reverse this trend so that young people can truly join in to solve the employment problem. We are in the year of employment and the social and solidarity economy, in accordance with the wishes of the President of the Republic,” added the minister.

Djibril NDIAYE