The procurement activities of UNJSPF are carried out by the Procurement Division of the United Nations and the Fund.

It also envisages the use of UNICEF procurement services, where appropriate, to promote the efficient and increased use of resources for essential commodities for children.

About 20 per cent of such procurement is performed by field based peacekeeping procurement units.

The report's 10 recommendations therefore focused on enhancing the productivity of procurement services, through measures such as benchmarking practices increased training of procurement staff strengthening of common procurement services for co located organizations, especially in New York, Geneva, Vienna, Nairobi and field duty stations and the introduction of electronic procurement methods or e procurement.

In this regard, it may be recalled, that prior to 1996, the former Purchase and Transportation Service was divided into one transportation and two procurement sections, the latter being based on where the goods and services were to be delivered or performed a Headquarters and Regional Offices Procurement Section and a Field Missions Procurement Section.

The Base therefore requires one additional United Nations national post for procurement to manage acquisition of materiel and services effectively and efficiently.

In the meantime, the Procurement Service will organize a second round of the advanced field procurement training programme to upgrade skills of procurement staff in the field missions.

It would seem that IAPSO is at present the only organization in the procurement system to have successfully automated its entire procurement process.

The bond is the United Nations lien against contractor performance.

a UNFPA executed projects include procurement assistance by the UNFPA headquarters Procurement Unit in respect of government projects amounting to 72.6 million.

The Chief Procurement Officer will be responsible for the procurement of goods and services both locally and regionally and will supervise the staff in the Procurement Section in undertaking required administrative actions relating to procurement, including the bidding process.

84 87)

Place of sale and type of purchases

UNICEF agrees with the issue of electronic procurement and notes that the best benchmark for measuring progress would be other public procurement organizations that have been successfully implementing e procurement.

UNICEF finds that merging procurement services of various agencies into a single procurement facility is not feasible.

For example, UNPD reported that certain items (contraceptives and pharmaceuticals) were purchased through UNFPA and UNICEF respectively.

34. Requisitions should continue to be approved first by the Field Administration and Logistics Division using the electronic method of transmission before being passed to the Field Missions Procurement Section for procurement action.

Procurement decisions, especially where exceptions to procurement instructions are made, should be better documented.

During the biennium ended 31 December 1997, the total combined procurement of the Fund amounted to 1.7 million, of which direct procurement by the Fund amounted to 0.108 million.

The 1997 exercise requires Field Offices to report all procurement anticipated in the course of 1997, including that of implementing partners.

Many delegations stressed the need for United Nations procurement to be transparent and geographically equitable and argued that, to expedite procurement and encourage local contracts, greater authority should be considered for procurement officers in the field.

UNPD United Nations Procurement Division

See IAPSO procurement statistics at www.iapso.org.

(xii) Procurement services posting of procurement plans and upcoming procurement opportunities on the Division's website preparation and issuance of tenders presentation of cases to the Headquarters Committee on Contracts, including review of procurement procedures being proposed and conducted by offices away from Headquarters and peacekeeping and other field missions award of purchase orders and contracts and negotiation and execution of contracts for the procurement of goods and services

45. The Procurement Division (formerly the Purchase and Transportation Service) at Headquarters indicated that local procurement was not its responsibility and that it maintained data only for cases received from the requisitioning offices.

Similarly, internal and external reviews conducted in the past few years on the role of the Inter agency Procurement Services Office (IAPSO), extended neither to other procuring entities of the system, nor to cooperative arrangements at the different duty stations at global and field levels, nor for that matter to the mandate of IAPWG serviced by IAPSO.

UNPD and United Nations funds and programmes at Headquarters have adopted common procurement related financial regulations and rules.

There are other ways in which UNICEF procurement is not comparable with other agencies' portfolios.

See, e.g., Purchase Contract Awards Act 2002 of Austria, para. Also, the Shanghai Interim Measures for the Management of Online Public Procurement Bidding, article 14.

16. Annual procurement plans should be obtained from all field offices and procurement planning should be strengthened further to ensure economy and efficiency in procurement planning.

Thus, the emphasis was changed to the commodity or service being procured rather than on the location of the office or field mission for which it was being purchased.

These benefits should be the subject of an evaluation, including findings on procurement performance benchmarks and other best practices resulting from procurement reforms at United Nations Headquarters and other duty stations as appropriate.

The value of procurement conducted directly by UNLB locally against the stocks amounted to 3,975,143.

As the procurement agent of the Global Tuberculosis Drug Facility (GDF), IAPSO has used its e commerce application effectively to deliver drugs around the world, valued in 2002 at US 11 million.

IAPSO Inter Agency Procurement Services Office

(b) Inter Agency Procurement Services Office

See Purchase Contract Awards Act 2002 of Austria, para. 116.10(4) and article 79(2) of the Public Procurement Law of Poland.

Furthermore, there were no means for comparing local procurements with international procurements in order to determine whether prices were reasonable.

The Procurement and Transportation Division was then renamed the Procurement Division, which reflects more appropriately the responsibilities of the Division.

Procurement by the Field Administration and Logistics Division of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, including missions procuring under delegations of authority, amounted to 122 million, or 4 per cent of total United Nations system procurement.

These include better procurement planning by requisitioning units, streamlining the procurement process in the Procurement Division and by the Headquarters Committee on Contracts and making necessary changes to the procurement framework, including regulations, rules and refinements in the Procurement Manual.

The Section is considering new procurement practices to provide more flexibility for small purchases.

Further, in view of the absence of staffing benchmarks to date, it is difficult to establish which procurement volume would justify full time specialist procurement staff in the field offices, and perhaps even at Headquarters.

The Procurement Division was reorganized, procurement staff received training, the delegation of procurement authority has been adjusted and new procurement guidelines were finalized.

A number of procurement workshops were held in 2002 and 2003, which focused on active and dynamic procurement.