FIRST PSO REGIONAL SEMINAR
HELD IN SUDANESE CAPITAL INSTEAD OF COPENHAGEN OPENS TODAY

Khartoum, 15 June 2011 – The Regional Procurement Support Office Seminar was opened by UNDP Country Director Mr. Claudio Caldarone on Sunday 12 June at Rotana Salam Hotel, in Khartoum. The four-day seminar brought participants from 14 UNDP country offices along with the Sudanese Federal Ministry of Health procurement and supply focal points. The seminar was facilitated by a number of experts from UNDP Procurement Support Office (PSO) in Geneva, UNDP Legal Support Office (LSO), UNDP Sudan Programme Management Unit and external partners such as WHO-AMDS, Global Fund and UNICEF.

Mr. Rino Meyers UNDP PSO, Senior PSM Advisor at the seminar

The UNDP Special Advisory Team in PSO Copenhagen selected UNDP Sudan as the first African country office to host the annual PSO Seminar usually held in Denmark. The motive behind the decision to shift the annual meeting to the country office level was to bring in practical field experience, thereby adding more context to what was previously a mainly theoretical seminar. “We hope to all learn from each other,” said Mr. Rino Meyers UNDP PSO, Senior PSM Advisor.

This PSO seminar aims at strengthening the Procurement and Supply Chain Management (PSM) in UNDP projects that are financed by the Global Fund through providing UNDP staff working on PSM with the required knowledge that will better enable them to operate effectively within a rapidly changing and increasingly complex work environment. As an added benefit of holding the seminar at country level, site visits have been arranged for the participants and international based facilitators.

Participating UNDP country offices are from Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Haiti, Iraq, Iran, Liberia, Nepal, Palestine, Sao Tome, Sudan, Syria, Yemen, Zambia and Zimbabwe. UNDP Sudan’s successful track record won it the opportunity to host this year’s event. Last year the seminar was held in Elsalvador.

Since 2003, UNDP partnered with Global Fund, an international financing institution that invests in public health, to manage their grants in 26 countries around the world, with special conditions such as having recently come out of conflict, to safe guard their investments. One of the main goals of this partnership is to develop the capacity of governments in the countries where UNDP is the initially identified Principal Recipient of Global Fund Grants, so that they can manage future grants directly. The Global fund, established in 2002 has become the world’s largest multilateral funder of health related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

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For more information on UNDP/Global Fund please contact:
Issraa El-Kogali: Communication Specialist, UNDP/GFATM Sudan: issraa.elkogali@undp.org

UNDP is the UN’s global development network, advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life.