Ludovick Utouh, the country’s Controller and Auditor General (CAG) warned the government in a report released on Thursday last week.
Non-existent standards, lack of inter-departmental and ministerial coordination and the utter disregard of procuring entities (PEs) have adversely impacted the rate and quality of progress of national development objectives.
A clear example is the over spending seen across most all government ministries, agencies and departments.
According to the 2009/10 CAG report, at least 10 ministries, departments and agencies had effected payments amounting to 50bn/- on procurement of goods and services that were not within their annual procurement plans.
Payments amounting to 13.9bn/- were made in the same year in advance to suppliers by other ten ministries, departments and agencies although the goods were never actually delivered.
The CAG’s annual performance audit report on management in the public sector for 2011/12 financial year also revealed that prices of goods have been controlled by suppliers and not the set procuring entities which were emplaced via the Government Procurement Service Agency (GPSA) to control excessive price variations.
The report revealed that the government has been incurring additional tender administrative costs since the Procuring Entities happen to duplicate the selection process because they do not adhere to the procuring guidelines specified for suppliers and the set price ceilings as issued by the GPSA.
Further, there should have been a net in place to catch such costly errors and there is, the Public Procurement Policy Division (PPD). So the report condemns the PPD for failing to monitor and evaluate the procurement performances not just last year but for past three consecutive years.
“…PPD failed to develop procurement standards to be used by public bodies when conducting procurement…,” and because of that “…they denied the government of necessary information that would have been used to effect improvement in the public procurement activities …,”
The report found weakness in the planning and implementation of monitoring and evaluation of the procurement system.
Needs, cost control and quantity control by Procuring Entities has been very poor. Yet, as the report points out, the audit system was put in place to assess the extent to which the procurement of goods, specifically on ICT equipment, is monitored and evaluated by the respective responsible authorities and appropriate actions taken.
Due to that failure of the Procuring Entities and PPD also failing to monitor these bodies, the report urges the ministries of Finance and Communication, Science and Technology to fast-truck the preparation of the National Procurement Policy and the establishment of procurement standards as well as to update the ICT policy.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Sylivester Domasa
Quelle/Source: IPPmedia, 15.04.2013
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