Procurement law review expected to cut red tape

Public Procurement and Disposal of Assets Authority (PPDA) has stressed the need to eliminate bureaucracy in the country’s public procurement processes through a law review to have one entity handling issues.

PPDA director general Eddington Chilapondwa said this on Friday in Mzuzu during the second session of nationwide stakeholder consultations on the review of PPDA’s legal framework, especially the Public Procurement and Disposal of Assets Act of 2017.

He decried the time taken before a procurement process is completed as several government offices have to scrutinise a contract before it is awarded.

Chilapondwa stressed that the practice robs the government of time to implement contracts.

He said: “Why are we having multiplicity? One government department is required to take the same files to another department. The work is supposed to take time at PPDA, which is our jurisdiction. But if the work takes time in other departments, then we are depriving the government of time to implement a project in a financial year that is fixed.

“The process starts with clearance by the institution’s internal procurement committee and then approvals at the PPDA Authority. At the regulatory authority, clearances are granted by several external agencies, including the Anti-Corruption Bureau, Ministry of Justice and Office of the President and Cabinet before approval is granted.”

Chilapondwa further queried the consequences of removing the certificate of ‘no objection’, saying other countries such as Zambia, Botswana and Uganda removed the requirement gradually until their governments’ departments were capacitated to handle procurement.

‘Certificate of No Objection’ is a document evidencing and authenticating that due process and the letters of an act have been followed in the conduct of a procurement process. It allows for the procuring entity to enter into contract or effect payments to contractors or suppliers from the Treasury.

One of the participants during the consultation, Dokiso Nyasulu, who is Mzuzu University chief procurement officer, said the law review should address issues of awarding contracts to one entity, saying government contracts should be shared equally.

“In one of his speeches President Lazarus Chakwera gave an example of 18 contracts going to one entity. What if we decide that the contracts be spread among 18 suppliers? It means we would have distributed the cake equally,” he said.

Nyasulu further called for the law review to iron out issues of supply.  Chilapondwa said detailed procedures should be laid out clearly on how procured goods are stored and used.