Outstanding business conduct principles, transparency, networking, and the continual monitoring of available bidding opportunities are essential in order to become shortlisted by any aid donor. Enabel, the Belgian Development Agency, is no exception to this. During an exclusive webinar hosted by DevelopmentAid, key procurement specialists from the organization shared the specifics of the agency’s public procurement and grant awarding procedures.
As the agency plans to conduct over 1,000 public procurement activities in 2022 in Africa alone, getting to know it better would appear to be essential for any development organization.
Enabel, the Belgian development agency, is a European bilateral donor organization that implements programs funded under Belgium’s international development and cooperation policy. It aims to build a sustainable world where women and men live under the rule of law and are free to thrive. The organization reports around 150 ongoing projects in its pipeline with an aggregated value of over €256 million.
In response to the increasing interest of the development community towards Enabel and its operations, DevelopmentAid invited Inge Janssens (Coordinator of Public Procurement at Enabel) and Lucas Van Geel, (Procurement Partner at Enabel) to discuss the agency’s operations and procurement framework and to share the best practices for successful collaboration.
Note that develompentaid.org members have access to Enabel procurement announcements and can set up a tender alert for this particular funding agency.
Procurement Framework
Enabel performs procurement operations on behalf of the Belgian governmental cooperation policy and other international third-party donors such as the European Union (EU), the World Bank, etc. Based on the nature of the donor, Enabel will use the applicable procurement mechanisms that are characterized by certain sets of rules and thresholds. In terms of the contractual framework, the agency highlights three types of procurement-specific contracts and one grant-related procedure. Public procurement contracts and grants were the main aspects discussed during this exclusive webinar.
Fig.1. Contractual Framework at Enabel (Legislative and operational aspects)
Source: Lucas Van Geel (Enabel): Business outreach event with DevelopmentAid (24 March 2022).
Public procurement contracts refer to work, supplies, or services performed by third parties based on requests from Enabel. Such contracts use a direct counter-performance principle which involves direct payment to the contractor for its efforts. The ownership of the contractual outcome remains with Enabel and may be transferred to the ownership of the partner country. Grants, on the other hand, refer to dedicated funding for an activity that is in the public interest initiated by the beneficiary (e.g., NGO, contractor, etc.). After completion of the grant activity, the beneficiary receives full ownership of the outcome. The direct counter-performance principle does not apply under grant activities.
Fig.2. Enabel’s public procurement contracts and grants
Source: Lucas Van Geel (Enabel): Business outreach event with DevelopmentAid (24 March 2022).
Van Geel, Enabel’s procurement partner, mentioned that public procurement contracts with values ranging from below €30,000 and up to €140,000 are awarded using a simple shortlist procedure without the obligation of prior publishing of these contracts. However, in the majority of cases, Enabel publishes specific calls of interest on its website for projects in this sphere of activity. The parties that are invited to submit their proposals for such projects are eligible entities selected from the agency’s vendor lists. A good start to joining the Enabel vendor list could be by submitting a well-articulated and comprehensive company presentation to the Belgian development agency. Networking is also an option for getting to know each other.
The calls for works contracts with values between €140,000 and €5,382,000 are published on Belgium-wide platforms while those exceeding €5,382,000 also have to be published in dedicated European journals (e.g., Tenders Electronic Daily (TED) − the European public procurement journal). In the case of supplies and services contracts, the values for national publication range between €140,000 and €215,000 while those with values exceeding €215,000 are published on pan-European platforms.
Fig.3. Thresholds and publication aspects for Enabel’s public procurement contracts
Source: Lucas Van Geel (Enabel): Business outreach event with DevelopmentAid (24 March 2022).
Enabel reports 1,089 active procurements for 2022, of which the majority (442) involve a value under €25,000. In terms of specific types of contracts valued at over €25,000, there are 339 projects related to the provision of services (including consulting services), 180 contracts that refer to supplies, and 128 work-related projects. In terms of geographical representation, the Central African Republic has the highest number of projects (231) followed by Benin with 151 projects and Guinea with 102 procurement opportunities. Mali (38), Uganda (62), and Niger (72) are the countries in which Enabel has the lowest number of active projects.
Fig.4. Active procurement projects in 2022, by value and location
Source: Lucas Van Geel (Enabel): Business outreach event with DevelopmentAid (24 March 2022).
Grant-awarding framework
Grants are a significant component of Enabel’s funding portfolio. The legal framework that governs the agency’s grant awarding procedures aligns with the objectives of the Belgian Development Cooperation Law of 19 March 2013.
To put this simply, within these terms of reference Enabel uses two distinct mechanisms to award grants, specifically:
Source: Lucas Van Geel (Enabel): Business outreach event with DevelopmentAid (24 March 2022).
Here are some useful links:
- Legal framework for public procurement at Enabel:
Procurement Legislation in Belgium: www.publicprocurement.be
PRAG: http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/prag
See also: DevelopmentAid’s report on PRAG 2021 changes and novelties
- Public procurement – specific thresholds and publication sources (Belgian legislation):
Enabel Website: https://www.enabel.be/content/btc-tenders
Belgian Public Tender bulletin: https://enot.publicprocurement.be/enot-war/
Official Journal of the European Union: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/oj/direct-access.html
For those who did not have the opportunity to join us for this online event, a link to the recorded version can be found here. The presentation materials used during this webinar can be requested at e.rata@developmentaid.org.
We invite you to join us for our next webinar on Impact-driven fundraising which will take place on April 14, 2022. Our speakers, Maarten Mulder and Han Valk will indicate how to define, measure, and communicate impact. They will also share several important tips on how to build a solid impact proposition and how to use this to raise funds. You can register here.
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