Major transparency and accountability gaps still prevail in the procurement sector, as indicated by the way the government handles annual procurement plans.
This is according to the Procurement Tracker Namibia for September released by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), in collaboration with the Hanns Seidel Foundation.
IPPR research associate Frederico Links highlighted three challenges with the procurement system which has been implemented since 1 April 2017. These are lack of transparency, lack of capacity, and the use of exemptions.
"The big issue with what is happening is the lack of transparency and a lack of accountability, which already seem to be affecting this system at the moment," he said.
Links added that this month's procurement tracker asked: 'Where are the annual procurement plans?', against the backdrop that all public entities are compelled by law to produce these plans.
"The law, regulations and guidelines state that all public enterprises, government departments and government agencies must produce annual procurement plans, which we then have to submit to the procurement policy unit at the finance ministry," he explained.
Links noted that these agencies also need to produce quarterly reports to be filed timeously, and working from that statement, what the procurement tracker found was that out of the 30 ministry levels, only 14 annual procurement plans for the 2018/19 financial year were on the finance ministry's website.
"Out of the 58 local authorities that we looked at, only eight annual procurement plans were on the finance ministry's website. From 70 state-owned enterprises, we could only find 21 annual procurement plans. If you look at the procurement tracker, you can see what the law says about what has to be in the annual procurement plan," the research associate said.
He stressed that they looked at 101 websites of government departments, state-owned enterprises and regulatory bodies, and found that only five of them had their annual procurement plans on the website.
"This is less than 5%. Starting off, the levels of compliance are terrible. Even the finance ministry itself does not have its annual procurement plan on its website, among those that are there. It is interesting that the ministry seeking compliance from other departments does not comply itself," Links said.
