By Cecil Mensah
As part of measures to curb the abuse of sole sourced procurements by Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs), the Cabinet of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo will from this month scrutinize procurements in this category.
“To this end, sole sourced procurements by MDAs and MMDAs beyond the threshold of GHȻ50 million will be subject to explicit approval by Cabinet before submission to the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) for consideration and approval,” government revealed in its 2017 Budget and Economic Policy.
The new administration’s decision to have Cabinet veto procurements by sole sourcing is to pluck the loopholes that have characterized such award of contracts in the country.
In the last National Democratic Congress (NDC) government, led by President John Dramani Mahama, there was alleged wanton abuse of the process, where the construction of some roads under the Eastern Corridor was awarded under sole sourcing.
This occurred even though the Public Procurement Act, 2003 (Act 663) sets the criteria for sole sourcing. The law requires that sole sourcing applies where goods, works or services are only available from a particular supplier or contractor, or if a particular supplier or contractor has exclusive rights in respect of the goods, works or services, and no reasonable alternative or substitute exists.
The law also allows sole sourcing in the situation where there is an urgent need for the goods, works or services and engaging in tender proceedings or any other method of procurement is impractical due to unforeseeable circumstances giving rise to the urgency which is not the result of dilatory conduct on the part of the procurement entitle.
Another situation that justifies sole sourcing is where owing to a catastrophic event, there is an urgent need for the goods, works or technical services, making it impractical to use other methods of procurement because of the time involved in using those methods.
The immediate past government is said to have awarded road contracts by sourcing in view of the conditions named above.
Subsequently, the Minister for Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, in presenting his maiden budget to Parliament announced that the new administration will carefully scrutinize all contracts awarded by sole sourcing.
He said as part of the expenditure management framework, Government will strictly enforce the provisions of the Public Procurement Act, 2003 (Act 921) as amended by Public Procurement (Amendment) Act, 2016 (Act 914), especially with regard to sole sourcing, which has proven to pose significant risks to fiscal policy management.
According to the Minister, to ensure that public procurements are done within budgetary constraint, “we intend to strengthen the procurement process by introducing another level of approval for MDAs and MMDAs.”
Giving other details, he said Ghana’s total public debt stock as at end 2016 stood at almost 73 percent of GDP, up from 71.63 percent in 2015.
“Domestic and external debt stood at 31.7 percent of GDP and 40.8 percent, respectively,” he disclosed.
In nominal terms, the public debt stock as at end 2016 stood at GH₵122.3 billion (US$29.2 billion), with domestic and external debt of GH₵53.4 billion (US$12.8 billion) and GH₵68.9 billion (US$16.5 billion), respectively’’.
He added this was due to the larger than expected fiscal deficit and financing requirement in 2016.
