Public Procurement: Between Integrity and Sustainable Development

ayman afify

common law - law - alexandria

Abstract

I. The Emergence of the Principle of Sustainable Development Recently, queries about economic development’s prospects has debated among researchers and legal scholars, especially the on how the global economic model will still in progress affects the limited natural resources. Therefore, recent studies created a solution to the equation to avoid any present and future difficulties, to ensure continued economic and social development to meet the needs of the future generations. Thus, it is not surprising that the state’s development policies, since its first appearance on the universal level, especially within the United Nations report of the Portland Commission 1987. The United Nations aims to achieve a great importance of this principle, by attaining the balance between economic and social development, and environmental protection and ecological conservation. Moreover, this why this fundamental principle played a significant role, particularly when it comes to actual application on the ground not only talking about theoretically. II. Sustainable Procurement as an application of Sustainable Development in Government Procurement To answer this question, international conferences have come to a certain conclusion, namely, that advancing development requires firstly, a change in the consumption patterns, shifting from a pattern of non-sustainable (responsible) consumption to the sustainable mode. Scholars stated that this change would create demand for commodities and products that take into account the economic, social, environmental perspectives. In other words, this effective mode will leads and push the wheel of change to create an efficient economic market and guarantee the accessibility to social justice making sure that the environmental balance and protection will accomplished. In contrast, this change in consumption and production patterns needs to be encouraged and fortified. The significant economic cost associated with this shift in production and consumption patterns makes the government in demand as constituting a large part of total demand in the internal market. On the average, 20% of the country's GDP is very enough to realize the size of this market that includes a governmental contracting traditional contribution by the state and through its delegations with the needs of its public facilities, as public works contracts, supply and service delivery, concession contracts, along with public-private partnership contracts. Hence, the term "purchase sustainably" refers to the effective contractual economic market policies (goods and services) taking into account social development and environmental conservation. In the same vein, the most distinguishing feature of the governmental market economy is that the state appear as the consumer (the employer), more than its role – as the driver of the market – nationally and globally. Thus, adopting laws governing governmental (public) contracts includes principles such as sustainable development, should assure the realization of consideration social development and environmental preservation, especially in a competitive market economy, as this would lead flourish certain types of behavior in particular, governmental private contracts. Thus, the adoption of these laws goes beyond imposing specific types of government contracting, to provide a model of what it should be. III. Obstacles Faces to Sustainable Development In this regard, scholars argued that several legal, economic or even administrative impediments encountered to face sustainable development. A number of traditional ideas arising from the desire to protect public funds is one main concern; especially to build the economic pattern is – undoubtedly – accompanied by an increase, at least in the short term, in government spending. Legally speaking, number of principles regulates the government procurement market, as free access to public transactions, equal treatment of applicants and transparency of proceedings. These principles have long been pushed to consider tendering as a classical mean of public contracting (purchase of goods and services) and whether sustainable development (procurement) will be effective. Most notably the principle of free access to public transactions and how compatible that the tendering system incorporates the principle of the award mechanism at the lowest price and this leads to re-questioning the lower standard of supply and the economically more advantageous offer. Either from an administrative perspective, there are many questions arise about the extent of the rehabilitation departments responsible for contracting public facilities to deal with these types of procurement to prevent administrative corruption (e.g. the purchase of less expensive products or the contract for the purchase of less expensive goods).

Keywords

II. 'access to public transactions " "the Principle of Sustainable Development" "Sustainable Procurement" . Obstacles Faces to Sustainable Development