Africa-Press – Botswana. Vice President Ndaba and Minister of Finance Mr Gaolathe has acknowledged the hurdles faced by the public procurement sector.
Responding to a parliamentary question recently legislators, Mr Gaolathe highlighted that the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) and Procuring Entities were grappling with resource constraints, both financial and human resources that hindered effective implementation and oversight.
Minister Gaolathe emphasised that the Public Procurement Act of 2021 includes comprehensive provisions aimed at combating corruption within procurement processes.
Despite the challenges, he assured that PPRA remained committed to enforcing these measures. He pointed to Sections 7 and 8 of the Act, which empower the Authority to oversee compliance and enforce regulations.
According to Gaolathe, the PPRA conducts procurement audits at various stages, investigates unethical conduct, and evaluates the overall procurement system. Since its establishment, the Authority has carried out 108 compliance assessments out of a total of 135 Procuring Entities, including government departments, local authorities, and State-Owned Enterprises (SoEs).
The minister stated that findings from these assessments were shared with respective entities, encouraging corrective action.
In cases where unethical conduct is identified, the Public Procurement Authority Investigation Unit collaborates with other enforcement agencies to conduct thorough investigations.
Mr Gaolathe’s remarks underscored the government’s ongoing efforts to enhance transparency and accountability in public procurement, despite the resource challenges faced by regulators and implementers alike.
He said the lack of the National Electronic Payment System continued to limit PPRAs’ compliance monitoring efforts. The minister noted that with the current manual system, the authority was unable to have a holistic overview of the public procurement system in real time; hence, most of the violations of the law are usually detected during the physical visits or go unnoticed at all.
He assured Parliament that the upcoming National Procurement System (NEPs) would alleviate some of the challenges that were currently experienced in public procurement relating to corruption, delays, and effective compliance monitoring.
Also, he said it would enable transparent and competitive bidding, which reduced inflated pricing and adding to that, he said several supporting documents remain under review, these include statement of user requirements, the Governance Model, and the Business Process reengineering document. He said the review and finalisation of these documents are essential for guiding system development, operational frameworks and change management across procuring entities.
The minister added that implementation of the approved strategy and kickstart of operational activities and consultations with relevant stakeholders were planned for this financial year. Mr Gaolathe said Section 147 of the PP Act provided for several offices relating to corruption, unethical conduct and other offences.
He said these offences included among others, conniving or colluding to commit a fraudulent, corrupt, collusive, coercive, or obstructive act and opening of sealed tender before the public opening of the tender documents.
The minister said Section 148 of the PP Act provided administrative sanctions that might be issued by the authority where there are reasonable grounds that there is a contravention of the Public Procurement Law.
He stated that during the 2024-2025 financial year, PPRA began to impose administrative sanctions against Procuring Entities who have committed serious violations of the Act. Mr Gaolathe said these included written warnings, fines and recommendations for disciplinary action by supervisors.
He said accounting officers on the other hand have begun to take disciplinary actions against perpetrators on account of revenue loss due to these sanctions. “I am happy to report that these actions have led to significant improvement with regards to compliance to the Act and improvement in the performance of Procurement Entities,” he said.
Mr Gaolathe also explained that PPRA has issued a Code of Ethical Conduct to all Procuring Entities, which is to be signed by all who handle procurement in procuring entities.
He said as part of the compliance assessment, PPRA monitored both the signing of the Code of Ethics and adherence thereto.
The minister said once in place, professionalism would ensure that qualified personnel administer procurement and PPRA would also have the authority to discipline and deregister those who contravened the professional code of conduct.
“To assist with this, the African Development Bank (AFBD) has approved a grant to fund the PPRA to develop a professionalism strategy and framework as part of Phase 2 for the project. Phase 1 grant is for the development of standardised bidding packages,” he said.
Mr Gaolathe also stated that the PP Act also provided for an integrity agreement, which is a standard agreement that is part of the tender documents that has to be completed by bidders as a declaration on the ethical conduct, fraud and corruption.
He said in case of a successful bid, should the bidder be found to be in breach of the integrity agreement, the procuring entity has the right to cancel procurement, including termination of any resulting contract at no cost or legal obligation on its part.
Mr Gaolathe said suspension of delisting of contractors that have breached the Code of Conduct is another way of dealing with corruption in public procurement; contractors are called to account and the penalty included suspension of delisting/debarment from participating in the public procurement.
He said this extended also to the Directors and shareholders of such entities, even when they join new companies. The minister also shared about companies subjected to suspension of delisting, and these include Chawe Civil Engineering, delisted indefinitely since November 19, 2020 and Marcacian Concepts delisted permanently since 06 October 2021.
On issues of inflation of the prices, Mr Gaolathe said Section 83 of the PP Act mandated the PPRA to issue price guides for commonly procured goods, works and services.
He said the price guides provided indicative prices for reference by Procuring Entities and procurement units as well as by the bidders in preparing their bids to estimate contract value during the budgetary process and measure the reasonable prices, taking into account overpricing and under-pricing when evaluating tenders. “
Price guides are published annually and have been used as a mandatory basis by all Procuring Entities for the past five years. Reference price guides/catalogues for commonly procured goods, works and services have been published on an annual basis,” he said.
He said currently, there are 22 price guides published in the PPRA website, cutting across both works, services and supplies. The minister acknowledged that some of the challenges in the implementation of the price guides included poor uptake of procuring entities, a lack of price guides for certain goods, services and works in some localities.
He said despite the efforts, the ministry continued to have cases of exorbitant prices and where such were detected, PPRA engaged the Procuring Entities and even called for records to investigate such. Mr Gaolathe also indicated that the ministry was concerned about exorbitant prices, particularly in the work sector, including consultancy fees and pricing of works.
He said in order to address the concern and ensure value for money was achieved, the PPRA was in the process of developing rates, professional fees and commodity prices for work-related procurement. Mr Gaolathe said the project would be undertaken in consultation with relevant stakeholders and was planned for completion by March 2026.
“As already acknowledged, the absence of the National Electronic Procurement System also limits the authority’s efforts to monitor contract implementation with the eProcurement system. PPRA will be able to monitor progress of projects in real time, including payments of contractors across the country,” he said.
He added that where there were noticeable unnecessary delays in certain stages of projects, the authority would intervene in line with its compliance-monitoring mandate. In line with Section 70 of the PP Act, he said Procuring Entities were required to submit an interim or end-of-activity report where substandard work is experienced.
The minister said such contractors are reported to the authority for action to be taken against them by suspension and relisting communities. He said failure to meet contractual obligations is an offence under the code of conduct of contractors.
Mr Gaolathe said contractors who are found to have contravened the provisions of the PP Act were subjected to disciplinary proceedings, which might result in their suspension, delisting or debarment. He said there would be continuous engagement and call accounting officers to account for the execution of their projects and ensuring that works delivered to the public met the best quality that Batswana deserve. Mr Gaolathe said that issues of direct appointment were to be noted as one the procurement methods under Section 52 of the PP Act.
He said direct appointment was the least preferred method in public procurement, since it stifles competition as a basic principle of public procurement. The minister said in line with Regulation 20, direct appointment should only be used under exceptional circumstances, where there was no room for competition due to limited potential contractors or where circumstances do not allow bidding. He also said in line with Section 53 of the PP Act, the most preferred method of procurement was open domestic bidding.
The minister was answering a question from MP for Okavango West , Mr Kenny Kapinga, who had asked the minister what the government had implemented to deal with corruption in procurement, particularly inflation of prices and standardised work and whether the adoption of direct appointment in awarding of tenders is not going to exacerbate the problem.
He also asked about containment measures and suppression of wasteful, spending by the govern-ment, councils and parastatals.
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