E-procurement to speed up service delivery

By Billy Rwothungeyo                                

At the end of every financial year, public entities return billions of shillings to the treasury after failing to spend what was allocated to them in the national budget.

Such government ministries, departments and local governments blame the failure of absorption of such monies on a lengthy procurement process.

Although amendments to the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority (PPDA) Act of 2003 came into force earlier this year, the public procurement cycle is still considerably lengthy.

With the launching of a five year strategy on e-Government Procurement (e-GP) strategy mid-this week, government hopes that entities will cease making procurement a scape goat for their failure to deliver goods and services to the public.

“There are cases where we borrow money, and even pay interest on it, but it is not absorbed for two straight years. I still cannot believe this,” said Finance state minister Matia Kasaija, while presiding over the launch of the strategy in Kampala.

 “One of the excuses advanced for the failure to absorb funds is that the procurement processes are long resulting in inefficiency. It is my hope that with the introduction of e-procurement, this trend of failure to absorb funds will be a thing of the past,” he said.

Uganda has 284 Procuring and Disposing Entities (PDEs)--19 central government ministries, 137 local government entities including municipalities and 128 statutory bodies and commissions.

All these follow provisions in the PPDA Act 2003 when undertaking procurement and disposal activities.

PPDA Executive Director, Cornelia Sabiiti revealed that implementation of the strategy will start in the 2015/2016 Financial Year.

Sabiiti noted that procurement of the infrastructure will be done in the next financial year after getting funding from donors and government and will be rolled out in phases until they reach the district level.