28 Nov 2017

Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Presidential Affairs, Governance and Public Administration Ms Kebonye Moepeng says public procurement is an important agenda for government.

Speaking at the Procuring Entities’s Workshop in Gaborone on Monday, Ms Moepeng said a significant proportion of public financial resources were used to procure goods, works and services resulting in the competition between private contractors for government business .

She said the wider public was usually interested in delivery of service in an efficient, effective and economic manner.

“Taxpayers demand value for money and efficiency in procurement,” she said, adding that all these made public procurement very important and therefore, a subject to tight scrutiny because where large sums of money were involved, vulnerability to abuse always increases.

She said ministries had a duty to put in place the right procurement processes for procurement adding that there were still reports of non-compliance to procurement policies and regulations within the ministry which had affected the performance of the ministry.

Ms Moepeng encouraged procuring entities to ensure adherence to policies, rules and regulations governing procurement in the public service, saying it was vital for upholding the principles of transparency and good governance in public procurement.

She said the ministry continued to face challenges in the procurement process which impacted negatively on the ministry’s performance ratings, thus, putting it in bad light before the Public Accounts Committee.

Ms Moepeng noted that procuring entities still failed to submit procurement plans on time leading to non-adherence to the procurement plan and lack of monitoring of it because the net effect of this was lack of financial discipline and failure to manage budgets.

She said non adherence to procurement plans always resulted in urgent submissions to the Ministerial Tender Committee (MTC) requesting for less competitive procurement methods like direct appointment and selective bidding methods.
“These two methods are not the preferred methods because they do not allow for fair competition and secondly they can breed corrupt practices and reduce public confidence in the ministry as far as allocation of tenders is concerned,” she said.

She said most procuring entities were failing to implement the use of local procurement schemes and other directives like Economic Diversification Drive (EDD) in the standard bidding packages as required.

Ms Moepeng said that citizens demanded quality goods and services, delivery on time and within budget, saying that left workshop participants with the options of looking at how best they could use the inputs and processes to get the desired outputs and outcomes.

She said effective management of the procurement functions depended on the knowledge, skills and integrity of the professionals carrying out the functions.

Welcoming participants, chairperson of the Ministerial Tender Committee and deputy permanent secretary Ms Boikhutso Botlhole said timely procurement was one of the key deliverables in ensuring that the 2018 budget (for development and recurrent) was delivered on time.

Ms Botlhole said the workshop was organised to equip all with the necessary skills and knowledge in conducting the procurement activities, to assist the ministry’s procuring entities to adhere to guidelines, regulatory provisions of the PPADB Act and regulations including the operations manual, to assist the ministry’s procuring entities to ensure fairness and  and equitability.

She said one of the objectives was to assist each other to ensure that they all implemented policies and directives such as EDD and the Local Procurement Scheme.

Ms Botlhole said the policies were intended to empower the local communities hence improving the economy of the country, bridge the gap between the ministry’s tender committee and procuring entities by addressing challenges that MTC come across during adjudication and issues that procuring entities have with the ministry’s Tender Committee.

By sharing these challenges, she said, they can reduce delays in procurement activities and ultimately deliver quality and timely service to Batswana. BOPA