SAPPN declares PPAF winner of 'South Asia Procurement Innovation Awards'

The South Asia Regional Public Procurement Network (SAPPN) has declared the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) winner of the South Asia Procurement Innovation Awards 2016-17 for its community driven inclusive procurement processes.
According to an announcement of the PPAF here on Tuesday, the award has been launched by South Asia Regional Public Procurement Network (SAPPN) with Asian Development Bank, the World Bank and Procurement iNET. The key objective of the Awards is to enhance learning and knowledge sharing from innovative approaches adapted by Procurement entities and systems across the region.
The World Bank, Governance Global Practice, Solutions and Innovations in Procurement (SIP-South Asia) acted as the Secretariat for Award selection. All award entries were assessed on the basis of level of innovation, replicability and sustainability.
Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund developed a Community Driven Development (CDD) procurement manual to introduce a participatory, efficient, cost effective and transparent procurement mechanism at the grassroots. Under its innovative CDD model PPAF through its partner organisations identifies and trains community resource persons from its network of local support organisations on financial management, record keeping, community procurement and asset management to take down the guidelines to all tiers of community institutions. PPAF has used this local human capital to build capacities of community institutions.
PPAF has also developed series of animations capturing the complete community driven procurement process featuring the role of community resource person, making union council development plans, financial management, procurement of assets and capital goods, documentation and monitoring. Booklets on these animations have been developed as ready reference for better understanding of the entire process. Under the PPAF CDD model women are made part of the community procurement process, they are part of the procurement committees responsible for purchasing assets and other material for projects and initiatives impacting their socio-economic status.
Apart from this, vendor Melas are held to ensure transparent procurement of certain equipment when sufficient information is not available. This activity is initiated for inviting proposals for procurement of technical equipment from the vendors in the vicinity.
PPAF is the pioneer of the CDD approach in Pakistan. Around 70-80 percent of the PPAF funding to the communities centres around procurement of assets to enhance livelihood opportunities, furniture, equipment and learning material for health and education facilities and building material for community physical infrastructure projects.
PPAF has been invited to the Fourth South Asia Region Public Procurement Conference, "Electronic Government Procurement (e-GP) in South Asia Achievements, Opportunities and Challenges" to showcase its work and receive the Award for this achievement.