Prime Minister’s unit to hammer out green public procurement criteria

Finance Minister Tonio Fenech today said that government tenders will be demanding a minimum set levels of environmental specifications, in line with European policy on green public procurement.

The identified sixteen product groups include a wide ranging set of products, ranging from textiles to office IT equipment, and from air-conditioning to food and catering.

“Public procurement can spearhead change and has the potential to bear significant impact in shaping the market for innovative solutions,” Fenech said. “Green Public Procurement provide a particularly important market and in the case of the latter can offer a niche market that needs to be exploited both within the local and EU Common Market. The opening up of public sector procurement to a wider range of suppliers exposes new opportunities.”

Malta Enterprise will be developing various support schemes that aim to encourage the involvement of local operators to bid for public procurement contracts both within the local and EU Common Market. Such support schemes will include: Free online public procurement courses; a dedicated public procurement website; setting up of a public procurement platform that allows for networking, benchmarking and exchange of technological viewpoints with other economic operators both locally and across the EU; Provision of alerts on public procurement opportunities within the EU; technical advice, and dissemination of information

The Tourism and Sustainable Development Unit within the Office of the Prime Minister has been charged with the responsibility for the setting up of the sustainable public procurement unit, which will coordinate the effective implementation of the Green Public Procurement strategy.