A survey conducted to explore the state of public procurement at the local level has highlighted a number of issues with as many as 55 percent of the respondents admitting to have lodged complaints contesting the processes.
According to the Rwanda Public Procurement Authority (RPPA) Act, for every purchase exceeding Rwf100, 000, a public entity is expected to issue a tender notice, inviting contractors through an open bidding process.
Public agencies, ministries, public universities and schools procure goods and services through a process guided by the public procurement law.
The report was commissioned by Strengthening Rwandan Administrative Justice (SRAJ) Project and prepared by the Institute of Policy Analysis and Research (IPAR-Rwanda) and the University of Massachusetts Boston.
In a field research conducted in five districts (one from each Province and the City of Kigali), respondents were compelled to lodge procurement appeals based on supporting documents required for tendering (23 percent), procedures and/or selection criteria (22 percent), and the application process and the e-procurement, as well as the score results from the tender evaluation (16 percent).
The research involved surveys administered to 50 bidders who had participated in tenders in the five districts over the past four years, as well as in-depth interviews conducted with 20 district officials, and tender committee members and procurement officers from each of the five different districts
The Resident Country Director of the SRAJ project Seth Karamage told The New Times in an interview that the survey was largely represented by small and medium businesses (82 percent). The largest of this group was the construction sector (36 percent) and general services (14 percent).
"Nearly 70 percent of the respondents had participated in public tenders more than twenty times in the last four years. 40 percent of respondents reported to have participated in tenders with a value higher than Rwf500m,” he said.
Delays in payment
One of the other issues that was raised was the districts’ delay of payments to bidders even while expecting the latter to deliver procured services according to agreed-upon deadlines.
Karamage blamed the delays on putting bidders in a financially vulnerable situation.
"The law does not require the procuring entity to pay interest for payment delays unless this is specifically stipulated in the contract. A clear instruction on this issue in the law or in Rwanda Public Procurement Authority regulations as a default stipulation should be adopted to ensure greater fairness and improve contractor performance,” he suggested.
Strengthening market price guidelines:
Interviews revealed that district officials very often lack accurate information about market prices. The report suggests that RPPA should address this problem by periodically conducting a national market price survey and updating its applicable price indexes on its website in order to help district procurement officers respect value for money as provided by the Procurement Law.
Need for procurement knowledge
The report also points out that gaps in procurement knowledge among those responsible for various parts of the procurement process surfaced during the field research.
Karamage suggested if procurement decision-making at the district level is to be improved, specialized training for district officials in technical specifications, contract management, logistics/supply chain management, and tenders for specific types of public works, supplies, and consultancy projects must be expanded.
These capacity needs, he said, were especially apparent when 80 percent of the bidders said that they receive helpful information from district procurement and other local officials regarding the complaints process.
Lack of professionalism
The report explains that the some bidders lack professionalism and ethics in participating in the procurement process, a challenge that sometimes leads to illegal practices, such as the submission of forged documents, and disqualification. These, the report says, often raise complaints about processes yet the fault lies with the bidders themselves.
"What you have is a bidder whose poor practices or low capacity leads some bidders to submit low price quotations, which may gain them the tender only for them to realise later that they cannot deliver on their contractual obligations,” he said.
The report suggests Public education efforts, especially those highlighting the consequences of bad practices, including the imposition of sanctions or loss of contracts for poor performance, could better alert firms to the dangers of engaging in unprofessional behavior.
In December 2018, the RPPA blacklisted 197 companies, accusing them of breaching contracts during procurement processes.
The list is composed of companies that the Government cannot work with for a period ranging from six months to five years.
One of the companies was indefinitely debarred for fraud and entering a joint venture with another blacklisted company.
RPPA’s investigation officer Harriet Umutesi told The New Times in an exclusive interview that the blacklist is made public to prevent cases of government entities engaging them again and as a form of deterrence.
"The motivation behind making these companies public is to reduce the number of people who don’t honour their contracts and also cut on the number of defaulters who use forged documents like bank statements and proof of contract performance to score tenders,” she said.
The report also comes at a time when the Minister for Justice, Johnston Busingye, has issued fresh guidelines to heads of all government institutions regarding public procurement.
The fresh guidelines seek to plug the loopholes that have previously resulted in misuse or misappropriation of public funds.
Busingye pointed out that some of the issues that affect government contracts stem from failure to undertake basic due diligence, failure to conduct needs assessment and unclear definition of the scope of work or terms of reference or technical specifications.