PPDA boss Cornelia Sabiiti bows out

Today is Cornelia Sabiiti's last day in office as the Executive Director of the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority (PPDA).

Sabiiti's contract as the chief executive of the public procurement regulator in the country expires today.

A lawyer by profession, Sabiiti was appointed to the position in 2011, taking over from Edgar Agaba. Previously, she served as PPDA's Director of Legal and Compliance and also as secretary to the board.

During her six year tenure, Sabiiti oversaw the review of the PPDA law. These efforts eventually led to the coming into force of the amended PPDA Act on March 3^rd, 2014.

The amendments significantly changed the way public procurement is managed in Uganda in terms of efficiency, transparency and accountability.

Some of the immediate benefits brought by the amended law were preference and reservation schemes which were brought to give Ugandan firms a better shot at winning government contracts.

Her last major action as the head of PPDA was issuing out of guidelines on reservation schemes to promote local content in public procurement this month. The guidelines are meant to reserve certain contracts exclusively for Ugandan companies.

The new guidelines are also meant to improve the capacity of local contractors through sub-contracting in the big contracts won by foreign firms.

At least 30% of the value of works undertaken by the Ministry of Works and Transport, Ministry of Water and Environment, Ministry of Local Government, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Defence, Uganda National Roads Authority and Kampala Capital City Authority shall be reserved for Ugandan through subcontracting to local companies in case a contract goes to a foreign firm.