CoST Uganda influencing reforms in public procurement_Contribution to the Emergency Procurement Guidelines

February 25, 2021 12:18 pm

Published by CoST Admin

CoST Uganda submitted 20 concerns to Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development and PPDA following an invitation to share ideas to inform the development of the Emergency Procurement Guidelines. From the Infrastructure view, we submitted 20 concerns of which seven were accepted in the Emergency Procurement Guidelines. We commend Government for engaging stakeholders in such important policy development processes.

  1. Submission; 20 concerns
  2. Accepted 7 concerns
 

Recommendations from CoST Uganda 

Included in the draft Emergency Procurement Guidelines for Government
 

1.     Disclosure of available budgets and sources of funds offline and online.

 

2.     Lack of market surveying and inflated quotes.

1.     Market surveys will be conducted for all procurement requirements and may use online mechanisms or previous performance of the same entity or other entities or agencies.

 

2.     The PDE may use other innovative approaches to ensure that every procurement process has a researched market price and potential source of supply.

3.     A report on the surveyed market prices shall be made for each specific procurement requirement and presented to the Accounting Officer for approval.

4.     On Contract management; The unit prices within that framework shall be reasonable under the circumstances and within the market rates as established in a market survey before signing the contract or call of order.

Disclosure of guidelines and recommended methods of procurement and requests for bids using all major platforms, social and physical. All communication within a PDE or between a PDE, bidder or provider, shall be in writing and communication in any other form such as telephone, verbal face to face, short messages (SMS), or any other social media shall be referred to and confirmed in writing.
1.     Lack of clarity on the details of the contract committees, Terms of reference, and their composition

 

2.     Delays in procurement

1.     Clear specifications or terms of reference for standard requirements or inform of a statement of functional performance outputs required from a provider.

2.     Clear contract performance parameters that shall include a strict requirement for timeliness for performance of the resulting contract.

3.     Deadline date and time for submission of a bid or proposal

4.     Responsibility for payment to the provider, mode and timeliness of payment.

Limited disclosure of contracts, including their sum, contract start, and end dates, and selected providers

 

Delays in payments

1.     Documentation of every action and decision

2.     To mitigate high risk of inflated prices, fraud, bribery and corruption as well as conflict of interest that is of great concern to the public;

a.     Provider awarded with contract amount

b.    Time frame for contract execution

c.     Date contract performed

d.    Certification provider performance

e.     Provider payment dates