This follows a call by the Member of Parliament for Bawku Central, Mahama Ayariga on government to totally scrap sole-sourcing following the sentencing of a former GYEEDA boss, Abuga Pele and a businessman, Philip Assibit.

According to Ayariga, awarding all government contracts through competitive bidding processes will help check corruption which is usually associated with sole sourcing.

[contextly_sidebar id=”Z5PfKvng1DdIt5Dzl7166GwOqgqx1GIx”]But the President of GIPS, Collins Agyemang Sarpong, told Citi News the solution to curbing corruption within the procurement process is to tighten the approval process.

“One thing that we know is that procurement people need to have what we call ethical compass. If you are an officer and a request comes, you need to be able to dissect it. It’s like somebody waiting the whole year and in September, you come to me and say we are going to do single source because it is under certificate of emergency while it had been in your plan since January. Even when you look at the procurement plan, people will put in it single source in January but the item will be bought in September and it is in their procurement plan.”

“Why can’t you start doing the process so that by September you will get your items. What I’m driving at is that people who are in positions of authority should always trigger their ethical compass and not just approve things because they want to approve it to favour any businessman or because they’ve gone for something and they are approving. We think that people should be able to question some of these things. That is why there is an authority; go to PPA for them to access the request before they give you the approval or denial,” he added.

Abuga Pele, Assibit jailed 

Abuga Pele, the former National Coordinator of the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Agency (GYEEDA), was sentenced alongside the Chief Executive Officer of Goodwill International Group, Philip Assibit, to a combined jail-term of 18 years on various counts, including willfully causing financial loss to the state.

In the scandal that hit the now Youth Employment Agency (YEA), some companies including Zoomlion Ghana Limited, RLG, Asongtaba Cottage Industry Limited and Better Ghana Management Services Limited, among others were contracted to render services under various modules for the GYEEDA programme.

It subsequently emerged that monies were paid to these companies who were awarded the contracts through sole sourcing for no work done.

223 sole sourcing contracts were approved in 2017 

President Nana Akufo-Addo during the 2018 State of the Nation Address in Parliament disclosed that his government awarded 233 contracts on sole sourcing basis.

He added his government saved about GHc800 million in the process as compared to the NDC government.

“In 2016, the Public Procurement Authority had six hundred and twenty-two (622) Sole Source Requests. Five hundred and ninety seven (597) of that number, 98%, were approved, and there were 25 Rejections. There were five hundred and ninety-two (592) Requests made for Restricted Tenders, and five hundred and eighty seven (587) (99.15%) were approved, and there were five (5) Rejections. A grand total of zero savings was made.”

“In 2017, my first year in office, three hundred and ninety four (394) Sole Sourcing Requests were made, out of which two hundred and twenty three (223) (56.6%) were approved, and one hundred and seventy one (171) (43.4%) rejected. There were three hundred and forty six (346) Requests for Restricted Tenders, out of which one hundred and sixty seven (167) (48%) were approved, and one hundred and seventy nine (179) (52%) rejected. Now here is the interesting part. The savings, made over the year as a result, amounted to some GH¢800 million,” he added.

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By: Godwin Akweiteh Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
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The procurement unit is to ensure regular auditing of state entities to ensure that there is value for monies spent.

This is according the Chief Executive Officer of the Public Procurement Authority, Agyenim Boateng Agyei.

[contextly_sidebar id=”tmMdxqBiJO6RhjkjtibGTXD5zm2a0ToR”]He said the creation of the two units are innovations he is introducing to the Authority to ensure that it effectively delivers on its mandate.

Speaking on Eyewitness News, he said “the procurement audit unit is not going to wait for such matters to come into the media landscape before we take action. We are going to conduct regular procurement audits from entity to entity and our concentration is going to be on the high-end entity.”

“It is going to be on regular basis so that most of these things will be detected far earlier than it has been completed before we go for assessment.”

He added that the due diligence unit will be dedicated to subjecting applications for sole sourcing and restrictive tendering to thorough scrutiny.

“All applications that are brought to PPA for consideration and approval for sole-sourced and restrictive tendering will be subjected to extensive due diligence to establish the relevance of the application in relation to the appropriate provisions of the law and established price reasonableness,” he added.

Meanwhile, the Public Procurement Authority is launching an independent audit into the $72 million SSNIT scandal.

Mr. Boateng Adjei said his outfit is awaiting the report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) before commencing its own audit which will look at document trails about the controversial OBS project.

According to him, the report will serve as a guide in ascertaining the procurement processes that led to the company pumping millions of dollars into the project.

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By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post We’ll now audit state institutions regularly – Procurement Authority appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

She described as sad, revelations by the Auditor General’s annual reports that 80 percent of the procurement malpractices are centered on sole sourcing.

[contextly_sidebar id=”BxUG2YIU8AVjk2Hcqw9OYTI6rDvQFNZa”]Addressing the press on Friday, Adwoa Safo, who is also the Member of Parliament for the Dome Kwabenya constituency said the Akufo-Addo administration will rely on open competitive tendering to correct what she described as anomaly in the procurement act.

“From 2012 to 2014 when I was on the public accounts committee, about 80% of their recommendations to parliament are procurement malpractices… So I think that if the law is there, you need also a policy direction. And I think that, that is the first step that the president has given us in his state of the nation address.”

“His [President Akufo-Addo] policy direction is that this government is going to adopt open competitive tendering, so that there is openness, transparency, accountability, value for money and competition is opened to everybody including Ghanaians,” she noted.

The New Patriotic Party administration accused the Mahama administration of having a voracious appetite for sole sourcing of contracts which were inflated at times.

The NPP argued that, sole sourcing allowed corruption, and benefited a privileged few in the NDC government.

Adwoa Safo is a professional lawyer with specialization in Procurement Law.

She once worked as the first legal officer of the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) for two (2) years, and was very instrumental in the formulation of the proposals that formed the basis for the creation of the Appeals and Complaint Panel of PPA, and the change of the name Public Procurement Board to Public Procurement Authority.

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By: Godwin A. Allotey & Sixtus Dong Ullo/citifmonline.com/Ghana
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The post Adwoa Safo calls for more power for procurement authority appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.