Business experts: Get to know gov’t procurement process
$100 bills: Money illustration.
TWIN ARROWS, Ariz.
If there is one issue that seems to get the political juices flowing for Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye, it has to be his efforts to increase spending by tribal departments with Navajo-owned businesses.
He brings the subject up at almost all of his speeches on improving economic development on the reservation and he has now held two summits here at theTwin Arrows Navajo Casino Resort to get Navajo business owners on board with his program.
The B2B Procurement Summit, held Oct. 12-13, attracted 200 people who registered for the event and many more who came and were allowed to attend after the summit got underway, said Robert Joe, chief of operations for the Begaye-Jonathan Nez administration.
A number of things came out of the two-day event that were newsworthy but the biggest probably centered around the Indian Health Service, which spends hundreds of millions of dollars on everything from bedpans to medical supplies every year, and all federal agencies have a mandate from the federal government to buy a portion of their products from minority-owned business.
IHS officials, like officials for the tribe and for the various Navajo enterprises, were invited to participate in the summit in an effort to get both sides — those who buy from Native-owned businesses and those who own Native businesses — together to work out strategies so that both sides benefit.
IHS officials estimate that only about 3 percent of the IHS purchasing dollar goes to Native companies.
“That’s pretty low,” said Joe, especially when you consider that their clients are almost 100-percent Native.
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