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Case Study: The Responsible Purchasing Model of the Mayor of Cali’s Office

29th March 2023

The Mayor of Cali’s Office, Columbia has been selected as one of the partners to benefit from Sida’s Global Capacity Development Programme on Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP). The Mayor of Cali’s Office is a local government institution which has already been progressive in working towards SPP by embracing a Responsible Purchasing Model.

This Responsible Purchasing Model is set out in their local Development Plan which details its objectives and goals for implementation, providing a legal foundation for implementation of SPP. The Sida Programme will take this a step further, supporting the Mayor of Cali’s Office with associated legal guidelines, manuals, SPP criteria and pilot acquisitions in order to further operationalize this Responsible Purchase Model.

In February, our Country Mentor for Columbia, Mr William Sanchez made a visit to the Mayor of Cali’s Office to deliver training on SPP. He met with Alejandra María Puentes, Director of the Department of Public Procurement, along with public procurement professionals from the District Administration. All of those he met are committed to learning from Sida’s technical support and training in SPP, as well as further sharing this knowledge with other public procurement staff.

The Mayor of Cali’s Office wants to achieve a number of important objectives through SPP:
• Ensuring the productive sector, as well as services sector adheres to sustainable practices to prevent negative impacts to the environment, in order to protect Columbia’s natural resources.
• Allowing for open communication to increase citizen and SME participation in SPP. This is often undertaken by City Hall through accountability hearings which give a clear message of transparency.
• Inclusion of social clauses in procurement e.g. the hiring of vulnerable populations, minorities, women and LGBT people.

Alejandra Maria Puentes stated “We are proud to be seen as an international example”. She went on to give specific examples of where they were already procuring sustainably, being stationery and cafeteria items, adding “this is significant progress in the area of sustainable public procurement and we must strengthen our approach even more.”

It is clear that the Mayor of Cali’s Office are committed to SPP and have already been very proactive in their approach. The training and technical assistance from Sida’s programme will allow for more of their procurement professionals to be educated in SPP and for sustainable public procurement criteria to be strengthened and applied across more and more purchases.

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