Current status of public procurement in health sector, Sri Lanka and its possible adoption of sustainability and green concepts: survey based

Abstract

In Sri Lanka, the procurement guidelines 2006 introduced by the National Procurement Agency (NPA) are to be followed by all public procurement Entities (PE), for purchasing goods, works or services. In the year 2019, The Ministry of Environment of Sri Lanka published a national policy on sustainable consumption and production for Sri Lanka and two sections relevant to public procurement. According to the said policy document, the Ministry of Health should ensure sustainable consumption practices at all levels in the health sector and institutions to be transformed into green work settings by 2030. Further it is suggested to apply sustainable public procurement practices (SPP) in all relevant sectors and for each product with a significant impact. SPP concept has not been defined in public procurement in Sri Lanka and no study has been conducted. For this study, a sample of 47 different professionals working attached to the Ministry of Health, Sri Lanka participated, and data was collected using a questionnaire. According to the feedback, the majority (38.3%) agreed that there is no mechanism to evaluate the Value for Money to measure the economic gain of procurement in the health sector, 78.7% don't prepare Social Impact Analysis report and 74.5% don't prepare Environmental Impact Analysis. 60% of the participants agreed that the present procurement process to be improved with new green and sustainable concepts. In 2014, the European Union (EU) has adopted a new directive on public procurement $(2014/24/EU)$ for Green and ethical procurement. The purpose of this study is to promote public procurement as a tool to achieve better health outcomes in Sri Lanka.