About the OECD-DAC and Procurement

Procurement has not traditionally been an issue of high OECD concern, except when it was seen to be a barrier to market access or a barrier to accession to the European Union for East European countries. Today procurement is central to the international effort to improve aid effectiveness, which led to the creation of the Joint OECD/DAC - World Bank Initiative on Strengthening Procurement Capacities in Developing Countries (the Round Table Initiative).

The history of the Round Table began officially in April 2001, when the High Level Meeting of the OECD Development Assistance Committee, (known as the DAC), adopted a Recommendation on untying Official Development Assistance to the least developed countries.

Paragraph 4 of the Recommendation states that reinforcing partner country responsibility for procurement is an intrinsic part of the Recommendation. In this respect the promotion of local and regional procurement in partner countries is a shared goal among DAC Members, which will:

• maximise the benefits of untying; 
• implement ownership-based approaches; 
• improve access to aid-funded contracts by developing country enterprises.

The Round Table Initiative [DCD/DAC/FA(2002)8] is a direct follow-up to this provision of the Recommendation and the work it carries out complements that of the DAC Working Party on Aid Effectiveness and Donor Practices.  This Working Party was set up in May 2003 building on the international consensus reached at Monterrey in 2002 about the actions needed to promote a global partnership for development and accelerate progress towards the Millennium Development Goals, inter alia through the harmonization of the aid effort. It is the sponsor of a High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Paris in early 2005, which will assess the results achieved in improving aid effectiveness since 2003 and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.