The second session of the Training course on the Sustainable Public Procurement in Georgia took place on 07-08 November 2022.
Objectives and expected outputs of the training course were to:
- present and discuss SPP concept and its benefits;
- present SPP related articles and provisions to the new draft law “On Public Procurement”, as well as the draft by-law on SPP;
- present and discuss the approach and the relevant guidelines for further implementation of SPP concept on selected procurement objects (goods);
- present and discuss Georgia SPP criteria;
- present and discuss various examples of SPP implementation, including examples of SPP practices in the EU.
Participants
The participants included students from the Georgian universities, women entrepreneurs, representatives of the Georgian contracting authorities, as well as other stakeholders of SPP.
Background
In 2014, Georgia signed an Association Agreement with the European Union (EU). One of the articles of the Association Agreement refers to a need for introducing Sustainable Public Procurement (hereinafter – SPP) principles. SPP is considered the process by which public authorities seek to achieve the appropriate balance between three pillars of sustainable development – economic, social, and environmental – when procuring goods, services, or works at all stages of the project. Since the SPP concept is a completely new approach to Georgian legislation, there was a need for a full roll-out of the SPP approach, including policy development, capacity building and SPP implementation, in Georgia for the uptake of SPP by the government.
Under the EU-funded EU4Environment project (Output 2.3. Green Public Procurement and complementary tools), UNEP in close cooperation with the Environmental Information and Education Centre (EIEC) and the State Procurement Agency of Georgia (SPA), implements a set of activities on promotion and application of SPP, including improving the legislation to introduce the SPP provisions. This envisages organizing a training course on the Sustainable Public Procurement. The purpose of the training course was to present SPP concept, its benefits as well as SPP related articles and provisions to the draft legislation and international best practice examples of SPP.