UK aid spending during COVID-19: management of procurement through suppliers
Aid-spending government departments worked flexibly with suppliers to minimise the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their work, but lack of transparency about the government’s new aid priorities hampered delivery, and the long-term impact of the cuts to the UK aid programme remains to be seen.
Our approach
We focused on the government’s approach to procurement with commercial suppliers and NGOs in response to the pandemic, between January and September 2020. We also explored how the UK’s management of procurement of UK aid programming reflected its stated international priorities, including to minimise the impact of the pandemic on developing countries and the most vulnerable populations, and to minimise disruption to the supply chains needed for the delivery of UK aid.
We looked at what actions were taken to ensure value for money through the procurement process, taking into consideration constraints on competitive procurement during the period, the need for supplier diversity and management of risks.
We also looked at what measures were taken to maintain supplier capacity and explored how those responsible for procurement over the review period were learning and adapting as the pandemic progressed.
The note focuses primarily on the work of the former Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), before their merger in September 2020. It looks at the two separate aid prioritisation processes that were carried out as the pandemic took hold – firstly, when government departments were asked to prioritise their work in order to respond to the pandemic, and later when all aid-spending departments were asked to identify “large cuts” in order to avoid exceeding the target of spending 0.7% of GNI on aid.