Performance Based Contracting In Public Procurement Of Developing Countries

Of the toolkit -- What is performance-based contracting? -- How to contract -- Checklist for contracting -- Whether to contract.

Development assistance, long seen as a giveaway to developing countries, is, according to Berríos' assessment, actually a giveaway to large for-profit U.S. contractors. Berríos shows that a small but influential number of contractors continue to be awarded most of the contracts, both in value and number, despite their average or substandard performance. Berríos documents the commercial considerations that drive U.S. development assistance. The increasing delivery of development aid in the form of contracts has led contractors to increase their weight and influence on USAID's programs. As Berríos contends, the reasons for giving aid often have little to do with helping other countries, because, instead, it ends up mainly helping U.S. firms. Little is known about contracting for development. The contracting process is often neither open nor competitive. Despite the talk of restructuring, USAID continues to award contracts that are unfavorable to the agency. Berríos documents the practices of private sector contracting, how they compete for USAID contracts, how they fit into the stated aims and needs of the agency, and what their performance evaluations say upon completion of contracts. Berríos also provides a sweeping review of U.S. development assistance policies, the trend toward privatization, the rhetoric about reinventing government, and the issue of past performance. A controversial assessment, this will be of interest to scholars, researchers, and policy makers involved with U.S. developmental strategies.

This book presents strategies for developing countries to shift demand for manufactured imports into a tool for technology transfer, enhancing absorption capacity and development. Also shows how national procurement policy can assist technological development.

A new book published by the World Bank's Private Sector Advisory Services outlines an innovative approach to delivering development assistance for public basic services such as potable water, safe sanitation, modern energy, and primary education and healthcare. Called output-based aid, the approach delegates service delivery to the non-profit or for profit private sector under contracts that tie payments to the outputs or results actually delivered to target beneficiaries. The book gathers cases of innovative, output-based approaches from across the infrastructure and social sectors, and also provides a checklist for designing and implementing output-based schemes. (From the World Bank website)

Road asset management is one of the top priorities of the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) Transport and Trade Facilitation Strategy 2020. The implementation of performance-based road maintenance contracts (PBCs)—an essential element of road asset management—promotes effective and efficient maintenance of road networks. Well-designed PBCs keep roads in predefined good condition at relatively low cost. This guide aims to help policy makers in CAREC member countries understand and implement PBCs. After a brief history of the development of PBCs, it discusses the various types of PBCs and their relative advantages and disadvantages. It highlights PBC implementation in selected developed, developing, and transitional countries, including CAREC member countries, to illustrate best practices.

The decision not to launch negotiations in the World Trade Organization (WTO) on three of the Singapore Issues in the so-called July 2004 package provides an opportunity to revisit the knowledge base on which proposals for further international collective action may be drawn. This paper examines the available evidence on public procurement practices in developing countries that could be relevant to further multilateral rule making on state purchasing. Although there is considerable agreement on ends (efficient, non-corrupt, and transparent public purchasing systems), little information is available on means and, in particular, on the effective and replicable strategies that developing countries can adopt to improve their public procurement systems. A concerted effort to substantially add to the knowledge base on public procurement reforms in developing countries, through targeted research and international exchange of information on implemented procurement policies and outcomes, is critical to identifying areas where further binding multilateral disciplines may be beneficial.

This book examines the regulatory rules on public procurement in selected African countries and provides a comparative analysis of key regulatory issues.

Despite the existence of effective interventions, there are many developing countries which are not on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for health. In many countries the delivery of health services is inadequate and one way of improving the situation is to contract with non-state providers. Contracting is a mechanism for a financing entity to procure a defined set of services from a non-state provider. Performance-based contracting is a type of contracting with: (a) a clear set of objectives and indicators; (b) systematic efforts to collect data to judge contractor performance; and (c) some consequences for the contractor, either rewards or sanctions, based on performance. Effective contracting for health services can be facilitated by using a systematic approach, described in this toolkit, that addresses key issues, including how to: 1. have a constructive dialogue with all stakeholders; 2. define the health services in terms of what services are to be delivered, where, the quantity of beneficiaries to be served, equity, and quality of care; 3. design the monitoring and evaluation to judge the performance of contractors; 4. select the contractors in a fair and transparent way; 5. arrange for effective contract management; 6. draft the contract and bidding documents; and 7. carry out the bidding process and successfully manage the contracts. The toolkit also includes a review of 14 evaluated examples of contracting in developing countries which concludes that the current weight of evidence indicates that contracting improves the coverage and quality of services rapidly. The six cases with controlled, before and after evaluations demonstrated large impact with themedian double difference (follow-up minus baseline in the experimental group minus follow-up minus baseline in the control) ranging from 9 to 26 percentage points.

Contract plans help clarify goals, increase managerial autonomy, and open a dialogue between management and government -- but their benefits have been oversold.