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Publish Date : 13-Feb-2015

The State Procurement Board has been removed of powers to award tenders after discovering loopholes that could have facilitated corrupt activities by board members. Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet Dr Misheck Sibanda, while addressing permanent secretaries and other heads of Government departments at a workshop on SPB reform in Harare stated that this change was necessary citing huge potential for corrupt practices in the tendering process. Following this new development, the tenders will now be awarded by accounting officers in various State departments and companies, and the SPB will only act as a supervisory and would do monitoring, ensuring that Government entities comply with the Procurement Act and other set standards.

According to Dr Sibanda, the reform of the SPB would facilitate growth of small and medium enterprises and the incorporation of e-procurement technology, among other things. He added, “Another feature of this procurement reform agenda is the decentralisation of the procurement of various goods and services to procuring entities in the different public sector spheres.”

“The public procuring entities, in this case, will comprise Government ministries, parastatals, State enterprises and local authorities. To ensure that they effectively discharge this role, the entities will be capacitated through effectively robust skills development programmes targeting accounting officers, respective heads of parastatals, State enterprises, local authorities and institutional procurement committees.”

Dr Sibanda further added that, the reform of the SPB would be e-enabled and it calls for a huge investment in ICT infrastructure, hardware and software. Further, a a special committee will be formed which will be chaired by the Office of the President and Cabinet for monitoring smooth progression of the reform process.
For this committee, certain members would be drawn from the Public Service Commission, ministries of Finance and Economic Development and Local Government, Public Works and National Housing.

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