Towards Improving the Effectiveness of the Public Procurement Rules of Bangladesh: Lessons from the United Nations Procurement Manual (Published)
Every year Bangladesh has to incur about 14 billion USD through Annual Development Program (ADP) for the procurement of goods, works and services in the public sector. Bangladesh has her home grown laws and regulations to ensure transparency, accountability, fairness, open competition to ensure value for money in the public spending. To this end, Bangladesh is constantly adapting international standard practices. United Nations (UN) has a unique procurement manual through which it procures all the goods, works and services. The standards followed by the UN can be compared with those of the Public Procurement Rules (PPR) of Bangladesh and lessons can be incorporated in Bangladesh to streamline the public procurement.
Keywords: Ethics, Procurement, Works, committees, evaluation criteria, goods, services
EXAMINING THE LINKS BETWEEN MARKETING COMMUNICATION AND MICRO FINANCE SERVICES IN GHANA (Published)
The study sought to look at the role of marketing communication in the provision of micro finance services, using Bonzali Rural Bank, in the Northern Region of Ghana as a case study. Both the qualitative and quantitative research approaches were used to gather information from Bonzali Rural Bank. The researchers adopted the quota, purposive and simple random sampling methods to select the respondents. Questionnaires were respectively administered to customers of Bonzali Rural Bank. The data was analysed by means of descriptive and inferential statistics using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS).Some of the key findings during the research were that the physical evidence of the Bank was not the best. Personal selling according to the research was not at its peak, an indication that the Bank has not done a lot in that regard. Based on the findings, the Bank is doing well with the Marketing Communication Mix Elements. The researchers recommended that the Bank should focused on the physical evidence, i.e., the environment it operates including the building itself, equipment, vehicles etc. as they all communicate with the customers and the customers’ make judgment of the services provided by the Bank through the physical evidence. Not only that, but the processes and the people who deliver the services
Keywords: Customers, Marketing Communication, Marketing Mix, Micro-Finance, services