Africa-Press – Eswatini. Eswatini Public Procurement Regulations Agency (ESPPRA) has set an ambitious target to save up to E3 billion from public procurement through the introduction of e-procurement, especially for government tenders.
The forecasted savings equate to 30 per cent of procurement expenditure, which currently stands at approximately E10 billion.
ESPPRA Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Vusi Matsebula has disclosed that the agency was working around the clock to finalise logistics, which will culminate in the commencement of electronic procurement. Introduction of e-procurement (e-GP) aligns with the country’s strategic roadmap to digitise service provision across all ministries.
Matsebula pointed out that the e-procurement platform was part of their endless efforts to effectively monitor procurement activity in the kingdom. He mentioned that they will be introducing a number of things as efforts towards fulfilling their mandate of monitoring procurement activities.
He said the e-GP was the use of information and communication technology to conduct an end-to end government procurement process online. “It involves all processes including planning, initiation, tendering, evaluation, award, contract management, invoicing, payment and reporting of public supplies, works and services,” he said.
He added that the system aims to provide a uniform and standardised procurement process for the procurement of goods, works and services.
He stated that the other aims of this system included improved governance through enhanced transparency and accountability, ensure effectiveness through public procurement information management and efficient processes and enhance socio-economic development through competitiveness in public procurement.
Matsebula also said that the e-GP system would automate the internal and external processes associated with the procurement process and all approvals and sign offs required had been catered for in the system.
“These approvals and sign offs include procurement planning, initiation or requisitioning, confirmation of funding, solicitation or tendering, the evaluation of submitted bids, publishing of the notice of the best evaluated bidder and contract award and signing,” he said.
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