Home | Business | ‘PROCUREMENT DEMANDS HIGH LEVEL OF ACCOUNTABILITY’

‘PROCUREMENT DEMANDS HIGH LEVEL OF ACCOUNTABILITY’

Font size: Decrease font Enlarge font

MBABANE - Apart from any public tender opening, the process of evaluation of tenders must be confidential and demands a high level of accountability.

This was mentioned by the Chairperson of the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS) Eswatini, Lomakhosi Magagula. Magagula said during the process of evaluation, tenders (bids) should remain in the premises of the contracting authority and should be kept in a safe place under lock and key. She said this safeguard was recommended in Eswatini in order to avoid any leaking of information.

Evaluation

“Information concerning the process of evaluation of tenders and the award recommendation is not to be disclosed to the tenderers or to any other person who is not officially concerned with the process, until information on the award of the contract is communicated to all tenderers,” she said. The chairperson mentioned that it was in good practice for all of the evaluation panel’s members, including the chairperson and secretary, to sign a declaration of impartiality and confidentiality or a similar kind of declaration before they start to evaluate the tenders.
She said by signing such a declaration, each evaluation panel member declared in an explicit way that he/she was not associated in any way with any of the submitted tenderer.

Magagula mentioned that if the panel member was associated with the tender, the tenderer may be disqualified. The chairperson added that procurement demanded for a high level of accountability at all times and panel should be willing to give an account for any decision taken at any stage of the procurement process. “Any malice practices in procurement have impact on individuals and the organisation as a whole and no supplier wants to deal with an organisation that engages in unethical practices. We are all responsible for our actions in the procurement space,” she said.

Process

Magugala further mentioned that embarking on a procurement process without securing funds cancelling a tender without notifying tenderers should be avoided. ESPPRA allocated a sum of E1.7 million to counter fraud by suppliers in the procurement of goods and services for government and public sector agencies. ESPPRA is the Eswatini Public Procurement Regulatory Agency. According to the Agency’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Vusi Matsebula, the aim was to obtain pricing of private sector entities to avoid a tendency to overprice goods and services when sold to government. Matsebula said this would allow ESPPRA to obtain greater efficiency and value for money in the procurement of common use items and sources of supply. “The E1.7 million allocated for this exercise is meant to support the collection and analysis of prices for 17 categories of common use items, and the development of an online price catalogue; as part of the on-going public procurement reforms in the country,” he said. The manager said by doing this, the agency sought to determine the prices of goods which were used in common by two or more procuring entities, and then review the prices from time to time.

Objectives

He outlined that the objectives of this exercise was to perform an analysis of market prices for commodities, prepare and put in a place a process that would allow the agency to produce a bi-annual price catalogue for all procuring entities, and to produce the agency’s first price catalogue. “The price catalogue is a tool that is to lead the fight against high prices paid by procuring entities for both common use and specialty items.  It is hoped that the publishing of the prices will result in lowering of prices offered to the government and public entities,” he said. Matsebula added that the list of these prices will be compiled as a product of a survey of market prices, as collected from several regional outlets in Eswatini from July to August this year, which would be undertaken by the ESPPRA in collaboration with the Eswatini Economic Policy Analysis and Research Centre (ESEPARC).

Comments (0 posted):

Post your comment comment

Please enter the code you see in the image: