Government Charged To Reduce Sole Sourcing Further

The Ghana Institute of Procurement and Supply (GIPS) has advised government to intensify efforts at reducing the sole sourcing of government projects.

This, it believes, will help address corruption and the inflation of contract sums.

Last Wednesday, President Akufo Addo announced that government had reduced the reliance on sole sourcing contracts.

Comparing his first year in office to the final year of the Mahama government in 2016, President Akufo-Addo noted that, in the year 2016, the Public Procurement Authority had “622 sole source requests. 577 of that number were approved and there were 25 rejections.”

“There were 592 requests made for restricted tenders, and 587 were approved and there were five rejections. A grand total of zero savings were made through the procurement process,” he outlined.

“But in 2017, 394 sole sourcing requests were made out of which 223 were approved and 171 were rejected. There were 346 requested for restricted tenders and 167 were approved and 179 were rejected,” the President stated.

President Akufo-Addo at during the media encounter
Speaking on Eyewitness News, however, the Institute's President, Collins Agyemang Sarpong said though government had taken measures to ensure a reduction in sole sourcing, there is still more room for improvement.

He explained that government can successfully ensure a drastic reduction in sole sourcing if a concerted effort is made.

“We think that sole sourcing and restrictive tendering should come down further. We need to bring it down. I think it is still higher. It should be reduced to barest minimum. If next year we hear it has been reduced to let’s say 10 percent, I know we are getting there.”

‘Stop inflating project costs’
Mr. Agyemang also called on professionals and practitioners involved in the procurement sector to desist from manipulating figures to favour cronies.

“What we have seen is that most professionals and practitioners within the procurement sector apply procurement without going through the proper processes-competition, they won't. Some will just even change the quotations just to favour their cronies or the people that they want to give contracts to from which the ethical point we think is wrong so therefore we are calling on professionals to do according to the dictates of the profession,” he said.

GIPS had earlier indicated that Ghana lost GH¢ 100 million through various unethical procurement practices in 2015.

The Auditor General's annual reports have in the past also noted that about 80 percent of procurement malpractices results from the sole sourcing of projects.