Public Procurement and Disposal of Assets Authority (PPDA) says 59 out of the 175 public procuring and disposing entities (PDEs) have uploaded their annual procurement plans onto the Malawi National Electronic Procurement System (MANePS).
This translates to compliance rate of just around 33 percent.
In response to a questionnaire, PPDA spokesperson Mandy Pondani said the key challenge was that most PDEs had not begun preparing their annual procurement plans despite already having approved budgets.
She said: “There are few areas where availability of the Internet is also a challenge. As a result, there has been a delay in processing and submitting their procurement plans.
“The major opportunity is the immense support from government to ensure that the policy is implemented. Further, the collaboration of PPDA and e-government and the demonstrated willingness of PDEs to receive handholding and capacity-building support are very promising for successful adoption of the system.”
Pondani stated that 249 out of the targeted 250 PDEs have been trained in Annual Procurement Plan Module while 212 out of the targeted 250 PDEs have been trained in e-Tendering and Marketplace Modules.
She said: “The authority is implementing a handholding exercise whereby PPDA officers together with ICT experts from the e-Government Department have laid out an extensive programme visiting PDEs in arranged clusters to assist them in the uploading of procurement plans.
“The authority is vigilant in swiftly reaching out to the PDEs that publish adverts in the newspapers to withdraw the same and the procuring and disposing entities are advised to publish the procurement notices on MANePS.”
Procurement specialist Alinafe Malisawa said large-scale digital transitions in public procurement systems often face resistance and inertia, particularly in environments where manual processes have been deeply entrenched for years.
University of Malawi macroeconomics lecturer Edward Leman said given the scale of resource leakages in the procurement system, MANePs needed to be fast-tracked.
MANePS Platform is a web-based, collaborative system to manage the full life cycle of public procurement, including tendering and contract management process, for both government agencies and suppliers.
