THE House Committee on Sustainable Development Goals approved Tuesday a substitute bill to House Bill 6526 which seeks to establish a sustainable public procurement program for all agencies.
The proposed Green Public Procurement Act requires all government offices to procure based partly on the lowest life-cycle cost of products and services and to categorize procured items to facilitate waste recycling and reuse.
Life-cycle cost considers all costs to be incurred during the lifetime of a product or service, plus “externalities,” which are unreckoned at the time of purchase, such as the cleanup costs for land used by a power plant. Current government procurement rules are typically based on least cost at the time of purchase.
The measure also seeks to include sustainability criteria in public tenders; to establish the specifications and requirements for products or services to be considered sustainably advantageous; and to develop programs for suppliers of sustainable products and services.
“As both public and private organizations become increasingly aware of the need to reduce the impact of products, goods, as well as services to the environment, government procurement carries the potential of stimulating the market for the production of ecologically friendlier products by setting an example as responsible consumer,” House Deputy Speaker and Camarines Sur Representative Luis Raymund F. Villafuerte said in his explanatory note.
The bill also directs the Government Procurement Policy Board to appoint a third-party verifier of claims of sustainability of products and services while establishing capacity-building programs for all government agencies.
Before the substitute bill was approved, Lanao del Norte Rep. Mohamad Khalid Q. Dimaporo proposed that local government units’ capacity-building activities under the sustainable procurement program should be fully funded by the national government.
“When we do capacity building, it requires a budget. That is where it is still a little bit in the grey area as far as the substitute bill is concerned. I want to make sure that in the IRR (implementing rules and regulations) they do not charge capacity building to the local government units. If there is a capacity building for the purpose of Green Procurement, the budget should emanate from the national government,” he said during the virtual hearing.
Committee chairwoman and ALONA Party-List Rep. Anna Marie Villaraza-Suarez said that the measure will be taken up at the plenary sometime in August.
The bill will have to go through second and third readings before hurdling the lower chamber. Its counterpart measure, Senate Bill 1371 which is filed by Senator Pia S. Cayetano, is still pending at the committee level. — Genshen L. Espedido
