On Wednesday, October 25, about 100 Brazilian companies participated in a training offered by the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (ApexBrasil) on food procurement processes in the WFP. The event aimed to expand the knowledge of Brazilian companies so that more suppliers can participate in regional and global processes for the purchase of food for humanitarian aid.
The training was led by Andrés Rodriguez, procurement specialist at WFP Regional Bureau in Panama, and covered three broad areas: global and regional food procurement statistics in 2022; WFP food procurement process; and the requirements and process for becoming a WFP vendor.
Andres presented the principles of global procurement (fair competition, segregation of duties, transparency, ethics and responsibility), pricing mechanisms, which also include logistics costs, and types of procurement calls. “WFP uses the short-list purchase model to ensure that the potential vendors have the capacity to supply the food adequately,” Andres explained. “For us, it is very important to know the companies and their food safety processes, for example,” he added.
The training also addressed food fortification, institutional market access (such as school feeding programmes), and prioritizing family farming in purchasing processes. In 2022 alone, WFP purchased 4.2 million metric tons of food, at a cost of USD 3.24 billion, from more than 100 countries. About 80% of these purchases were made up of cereals, specialty nutritional foods, vegetable oils and pulses.
“This training is extremely important for us as a regional office, because Brazil is one of the world’s great powers in agricultural products, but it only represents 0.3% of the food WFP buys in the world,” said Lola Castro, WFP’s regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean.
“Exporting is a pathway for all companies, of all sizes, and why not export to a UN agency that buys in such a significant quantity annually? For this, we need knowledge and information,” said Clarissa Furtado, Competitiveness Manager at ApexBrasil.
The training is recorded and available in this link.