Background

For the last four decades, Saudi Arabia has realized and sustained remarkable progress along the socioeconomic development path. As a result of this, the Kingdom has been able to move to a high-income country. The GDP, for instance, increased from SR156 billion in 1969 to SR 2,631 billion in 2018, putting the economy among the top 20 global economies in terms of size. Based on the annual ranking of the Human Development Index (HDI) of the Human Development Report, Saudi Arabia has steadily moved from the medium human development category in the 1990s to the very high human development category in 2018 at 0.857 value of HDI.The Saudi Vision 2030 represents an ambitious resolve with long-term goals and expectations founded on the strengths and capabilities of the Kingdom. It covers the three themes of a vibrant society, a thriving economy, and an ambitious nation. A thorough review of the three themes and their underlying issues of national concern would reveal a holistic approach to development that encompasses the three dimensions of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): the social, the economic and the environmental.

The Umbrella Program for Socio-Economic Development is a partnership between the Ministry of Economy and Planning (MEP), and UNDP aims at mainstreaming social and economic development the national policies, and sectoral and regional plans. It focuses on mobilizing technical assistance and capacity development to MEP to facilitate economic and social transformation, including economic diversification, inclusive and accelerated economic growth. Specifically, the program framework covers the following main areas:

• SDGs monitoring and reporting.
• Policymaking, policy analysis and regional development planning.
• Producing the National Human Development Report

Within this context, the project seeks to recruit a Senior Territorial Development Expert to support the “Sectoral and Regional Development Affairs” Deputyship at the Ministry of Economy and Planning (Regional Development Affairs Department) at MEP to improve and maintain the Territorial development toolkit of the Department. The Expert will also focus on capacity building and transfer of knowledge to the Regional Development Affairs Department.

A Consultant, or Analyst, is responsible for providing industry expertise to corporations and individuals. Their duties include researching their client and their client’s position within an industry, meeting with company executives or professionals to make suggestions and develop improvement plans based on their needs and maintaining a professional relationship with their clients over time

Duties and Responsibilities

The Economic Insights and Research unit is responsible for developing high-level summaries and economic reports on all major global economic developments, events, and topics of interest and relevance to policy makers.

These reports are designed to inform top official within the Saudi government and require the input of highly qualified economists with expertise in writing insightful and impactful reports, summaries, and recommendations.

Tasks:

1. Writing short economic studies, reports, and analysis pieces.
2. The workload will depend on requests from top management. On average, we require 4 such pieces per month of length from 5 to 10 pages, and with the proper economic data and analysis.
3. To continuously contribute to periodic short economic reports, studies, and summaries.
4. To continuously contribute to the annual State of the Economy flagship publication of MEP.

EXPECTED OUTPUTS AND DELIVERABLES

B.Institutional Arrangement

The expert will be reporting to the Chief Technical Advsior/ Head of the Strategic Economic Insights and Research Unit at MEP, while keeping UNDP focal person informed about the progress reports. A detailed work plan for the expert’s duties and responsibilities will be formulated by MEP. She/he will be supervised by the head of the Strategic Economic Insights and Research Unit and will work in collaboration with other consultants and the relevant MEP technical staff as deemed needful.

Duration of the Work

• The expected duration of the assignment  is 12 Months, with the possibility of an extension, based on performance and availability of funds.
• The anticipated starting date of the assignment is 1st of Febuary 2023. And the expected date of full completion of all tasks under this assignment is 29st of February of 2024.

Duty Station

• The duty station for the work in country will be in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He/ She will be embedded within the Ministry of Economy and Planning .
• If unforeseen travel outside the consultant’s home-based city is requested by UNDP and not required by the Terms of References (ToR), such travel shall be covered by UNDP in line with applicable rules and regulations and upon prior written agreement. In such cases, the consultant shall receive living allowances not exceeding the United Nations (UN) Daily Subsistence Allowance (DSA) rate for such other location(s).

• Note: A written approval from UNDP and relevant authorities will be required to facilitate the consultant's travel to any locations than stated on this TOR on official missions where necessary.

Working Arrangements:

• All mission travels must be approved in advance and in writing by the Supervisor.
• United Nations Development of Safe and Security – BSAFE course must be successfully completed prior to the commencement of travel.
• The Consultant is responsible for ensuring they have vaccinations/inoculations when traveling to certain countries, as designated by the UN Medical Director.
• The consultant is also required to comply with the UN security directives.
• The consultant is responsible for obtaining any visas needed in connection with travel with the necessary support from UNDP.
• The consultant will be responsible for submitting his/her own mission travel arrangements in line with UNDP travel policies.
• The consultant is responsible for required health and life insurance related to work or travel.
• The consultant is expected to have his/her own Laptop/Computer.

Competencies

• Knowledge & Experience of working with constituents in the Arab States, particularly in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
• Demonstrates integrity and fairness by modelling UN values and ethical standards.
• Demonstrates professional competence and is conscientious and efficient in meeting commitments, observing deadlines and achieving results.
• Display cultural, gender, religion and age sensitivity and adaptability.
• Excellent communication, organizational and management skills
• Focuses on the impact and results of the client
• Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive-constructive attitude
• Builds strong relationships with clients and external actors

Corporate Competencies:

• Demonstrates integrity by modelling the UN’s values and ethical standards
• Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, and nationality sensitivity and adaptability

Functional Competencies:

• Ability to handle effectively multiple tasks without compromising quality, team spirit, and positive working relationships
• Highly level in program economic reporting and implementation with strong knowledge- base in excessive experience in this field.
• Demonstrated ability to conceptualize, develop and oversee complex program implementation.

Required Skills and Experience

1. Scope of Price Proposal and Schedule of Payments:

All proposals must be expressed in a lump sum amount. This amount must be “all-inclusive”. Please note that the terms “all-inclusive” implies that all costs (professional fees, living allowances, communications, consumables, etc.) that could possibly be incurred are already factored into the final amounts submitted in the proposal.

Payments shall be made to the individual contractor upon successful completion and certification by UNDP that services have been satisfactorily performed, based upon the actual number of working days and accomplishments of each deliverable.

Payment shall be made as a deliverables-based lump upon the receipt of the deliverables and certification of satisfactory performance by UNDP.

The Expert will share a Certificate of Payment (CoP) where he/he needs to indicate achieved outputs. Then the certificate of payment must be verified by the UNDP Team and certified by UNDP top management. The Expert is advised to keep a detailed timesheet of the days worked and tasks performed throughout the consultancy assignment. A bi-weekly update of the timesheet will be requested, and such documentation will support the payment process as deemed needful.

1. Recommended Presentation of Offer

For purposes of generating Offers whose contents are uniformly presented and to facilitate their comparative analysis, it is best to recommend the preferred contents and presentation of the Offer to be submitted, as well as the format/sequencing of their presentation. The following documents may be requested:

1. Duly accomplished Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability using the template provided by UNDP;
2. Personal CV or P11, indicating all past experience from similar projects, as well as the contact details (email and telephone number) of the Candidate and at least three (3) professional references;
3. Brief description of why the individual considers him/herself as the most suitable for the assignment, and a methodology, if applicable, on how they will approach and complete the assignment. A methodology is recommended for intellectual services, but maybe omitted for support services [Note: this is optional for support services]; 
4. Financial Proposal that indicates the all-inclusive total contract price, supported by a breakdown of costs, as per the template provided. The terms “all-inclusive” implies that all costs (professional fees, travel costs, living allowances, communications, consumables, etc.) that could possibly be incurred are already factored into the final amounts submitted in the Proposal. If an Offeror is employed by an organization/company/institution, and he/she expects his/her employer to charge a management fee in the process of releasing him/her to UNDP under the Reimbursable Loan Agreement (RLA), the Offeror must indicate at this point and ensure that all such costs are duly incorporated in the financial Proposal submitted to UNDP. 

1. Criteria for Selection of the Best Offer

 Applicants are shortlisted based on the Required Skills and Experience stated in the TOR.

The selection of the best offer from the shortlisted candidates will be based on a Combined Scoring method – where the qualifications and methodology will be weighted a max. of 70% and combined with the price offer, which will be weighted a max of 30%.

Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the following methodologies:

Step I: Screening and desk review/(Interview optional):

Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the following methodology.

Technical Criteria (CV review and Desk Review/Interview optional) – maximum 70 points. Only candidates who obtained at least 70% of points from the CV desk review (who will score at least 49 points) will be considered for the next evaluation stage, i.e., financial evaluation.

Applications will be first screened, and only candidates meeting the following minimum criteria will progress to the pool for shortlisting:

Financial evaluation - Total 30% (30 points)

The following formula will be used to evaluate the financial proposal:

p = y (µ/z), where

p = points for the financial proposal being evaluated

y = maximum number of points for the financial proposal

µ = price of the lowest-priced proposal

z = price of the proposal being evaluated

Instructions for on-line submissions

Step 1:  Please prepare all required documents electronically.

Step 2: Combine all documents in ONE SINGLE FILE (preferably in PDF however, Word format can also be accepted) and upload to the UNDP Jobs links

Step 3: After that, you will receive an auto-reply from the UNDP jobs if your offer is received successfully.

Interested applicants are advised to carefully review this advertisement and ensure that they meet the requirements and qualifications described. 

Given the volume of applications that UNDP receives, only shortlisted offerors will be notified.

UNDP reserves the right to reject any incomplete applications.

Please be informed that we don’t accept applications submitted via email.

Interested Offerors are required to submit an application via UNDP Jobsite system as the application screening and evaluation will be done through UNDP Jobsite system. Please note that UNDP Jobsite system allows only one uploading of application documents, so please make sure that you merge all your documents into a single file. Your online application submission will be acknowledged where an email address has been provided. If you do not receive an email acknowledgement within 24 hours of submission, your application may not have been received. In such cases, please resubmit the application if necessary. Please combine all your documents into one (1) single PDF document as the system only allows you to upload a maximum of one document.

Any request for clarification/additional information on this procurement notice shall be communicated in writing to UNDP office or send to email mohammed.abbas@undp.org  with a copy to huda.alsaud@undp.org the Procurement Unit would endeavor to provide information expeditiously, only requests receiving at least 3 working days prior to the submission deadline will be entertained. Any delay in providing such information will not be considered as a reason for extending the submission deadline. The UNDP's response (including an explanation of the query but without identifying the source of inquiry) will be posted on the Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice page as provided above. Therefore, all prospective Offerors are advised to visit the page regularly to make obtain updates related to this Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice.

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence.

UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

Interested applicants are advised to carefully review this advertisement and ensure that they meet the requirements and qualifications described. 

The interested offeror must read the Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice, which can be viewed at https://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_notice.cfm?notice_id=97368 for more detailed information about terms of references, instructions for the offeror, and to download the documents to be submitted in the offer online.

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence.

UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

APPROVAL

This ToR is certified by:

Signature:                                                                                                                    

Name:                                                                                                                          

Designation:                                                                                                               

Date of Signing:                                                                                          

This ToR is approved by:

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Name:                                                                                                                          

Designation:                                                                                                               

Date of Signing: