SEMINAR ON ENHANCING SMES ROLE IN PUBLIC TENDERS

MUSCAT: The Tender Board on Monday organised a panel discussion under the theme ‘Enhancing the role of SMES’ in public tenders.

The seminar aimed at sharing specialised and professional views on how to develop businesses, facilitate and expedite the processing of transactions related to tender awarding for SMES within the frameworks and laws that regularise the public tenders.

Dr Rasheed bin al Safi al Huraibi, Chairman of the Tender Board, said that the panel discussion comes within the framework of the continuous communication with the relevant public and private stakeholders, as well as SMES to understand and expand the role of the Tender Board in the development of SMES.

He added that it also aims at developing the ability of SMES to get tenders and develop their performances.

Mohammed bin Hamad al Flaiti, Head of the In-country-value (ICV) Department at the Tender Board, made a presentation on the issued circulars with regard to SMES.

Dr Ali bin Saud al Harthy, Adviser to the Chairman of Tender Board for Planning, presented two panel discussions on allocating not less than 10 per cent of the public tenders of the government to SMES and allocating not less than 10 per cent of the tenders awarded to main contractors to SMES.

The Tender Board’s statistics indicated that the number of tenders and procurement orders awarded to SMES in 2017 stood at 1,527 worth about RO 27,423,072.

467 tenders worth RO 20,237,511 were awarded in 2017. In 2017, 1,060 purchase transactions worth of RO 7,185,561 were also awarded.