Dubbo Regional Council is urging the community to follow in its footsteps and support local businesses at a time when "it's absolutely and desperately needed".
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
This week, council updated its local procurement policy.
From September, if the goods or services needed by council are under $10,000, only local suppliers will be used. For larger jobs, there will be between a five to 10 per cent price advantage for local suppliers.
Until the end of the year, an additional five per cent advantage will be given to locals as a temporary COVID-19 support measure.
Dubbo mayor Ben Shields said the Community Support-Based Procurement Policy was particularly important when COVID-19 was having a significant impact on the economy.
ALSO MAKING NEWS:
"This is designed to make sure Dubbo is insulated as best as possible when it comes to potential financial nasties that the entire state and the entire country may face over the next few years," Cr Shields said.
"I've always thought that our local purchasing policy was weak, very weak. This idea that we'd just tack two per cent on a tender document and hope for the best simply wasn't working.
"The idea now that anything under $10,000, those small purchases which is the bulk of the buying, has to be local is fantastic. This will totally energise council's commitment to our local businesses at a time when it is absolutely and desperately needed."
Deputy mayor Stephen Lawrence said it was important for people to understand that a five to 10 per cent price advantage was "absolutely huge".
He encouraged anyone who provided goods and services to get in touch with council staff so that they had access to all the information on the new policy.
But Cr Shields wants the Dubbo community to go a step further.
"The challenge is now to the rest of the community, back our local businesses as well. That's just not community members, mums and dads, people living in the neighbourhoods of Dubbo, that's our businesses as well. If you're in business you should particularly be backing your fellow business people, your fellow local businesses," he said.
"If Dubbo was to keep as much money as possible in our local economy, we would do far better out of this coming pandemic-related recession as possible."
The new policy comes after a review of the former procurement policy.
After meeting with businesses and talking to council staff, it was determined the existing policy required a complicated application process, was not attractive to local suppliers and had minimum impact in influencing local procurement.