Procurement Tracker Namibia
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PROCUREMENT TRACKER NAMIBIA Issue No. 9 April 2020 Rule of law broken The Public Procurement Act was sup- new board not become tainted by the the starting blocks, when it emerged in posed to be a bright new dawn, so same negative perceptions that haunted March 2017 that then finance minister why and how has it gone so wrong? the old Tender Board. Calle Schlettwein was on the verge of ap- We review the first three years of the And he was right. For while the Public pointing the CPBN following an opaque new procurement system. Procurement Act of 2015 ticks most of process. This while the law, in section 11 the right boxes in terms of best prac- (c) of Part 3, provides for an “open, fair When he officiated at the unveiling of tice on paper, the operationalising and and transparent” recruitment process. the new corporate identity of the Central implementation of the law has been a And that was just the beginning of the Procurement Board of Namibia (CPBN) very rocky exercise. Hence the negative implementation challenges that were to in March 2020, then finance deputy min- perceptions. follow. ister Natangwe Ithete cautioned that the The system’s troubles commenced in TO PAGE 2 PROCUREMENT TRACKER FROM PAGE 1 Transparency & Institutional weakness This suggests that the system could accountability deficits limp on for years to come and points The transparency and accountability to a lack of appropriate planning that While the law starts off by stating deficits point to what has become the should actually have preceded the that transparency and accountability obvious culprit: institutional weak- implementation and operationalising of are core to the procurement system it nesses. the law. establishes, these two critical govern- Governance in the state sector has ance principles have been in deficit always been problematic – entities Corruption and waste since 1 April 2017. across the state have been struggling Since the first edition of Procurement to produce annual reports and most All this has created fertile ground Tracker Namibia came out, in June of those who do, including ministries, for corruption and mismanagement of 2018, one of the issues that we have are challenged to deliver clean au- state resources to flourish. repeatedly spotlighted as showing dits, pointing to lax financial controls. While there’s no hard data to cite on concerning implementation shortfall Across all levels of state there is a this, the testimonies of some – both has been the transparency inducing shortage of skills and capacity, and from the private and public sectors features of the framework. this plays out too in the procurement – operating within the procurement Three years down the line, offices, structures within state entities. system point to alleged corrupt activ- ministries, agencies and state-owned As we pointed out in Procurement ities and waste and mismanagement enterprises continue to struggle and Tracker Namibia 8, in October 2019, of resources not having abated signif- fail in the timely and obligatory pro- lack of capacity in the procurement icantly since 1 April 2017, even as due duction, submission and making public function appears to be very severe. to economic and fiscal conditions since of annual procurement plans, individ- 2016 there has been less spending in ual procurement plans and quarterly Three years down the line, offices, the public procurement sphere. procurement progress reports. ministries, agencies and state-owned Some of the high profile instances of According to the Procurement Poli- enterprises continue to struggle and alleged corruption that we have point- cy Unit (PPU) in the finance ministry, fail in the timely and obligatory produc- ed to in previous editions include irreg- there are over 170 procuring entities ular procurement and related financial tion, submission and making public of in the state sector, but over the first management practices at the justice three years of the new dispensa- annual procurement plans, individual ministry in 2019, as well as irregulari- tion less than half have consistently procurement plans and quarterly pro- ties around procurement on such big managed to provide evidence of such curement progress reports. infrastructure projects as the upgrad- plans and reports, and none regularly, ing of the Hosea Kutako International as per the law. Both the PPU and CPBN have Airport and road building contracts in To illustrate, in the three years and around Windhoek. repeatedly indicated that they are un- since the operationalising of the At the same time, at the heart of the der-staffed and under-skilled and it is new system, neither the PPU nor procurement system, at the CPBN, clear that “there exists a large capac- the CPBN have produced an annual deputy chairperson Lischen Ramakhut- report – which combined would give ity gap among procurement practi- la remains under a cloud of suspicion an overview of the functioning of the tioners. The new legislation requires over conflict of interest and corruption procurement system – as per the law. a professional approach in public allegations, related to the entity’s web- And as transparency has suffered in procurement proceedings. There is site and the involvement of a company the new system, so too has accounta- therefore a need for a new breed of associated with her brother. The finance bility. procurement professionals”, as stated ministry, despite former minister Schlet- Since April 2017 there have been by a draft procurement capacity build- twein announcing over a year ago that a number of procurement initiatives ing strategy developed by the PPU in the matter would be investigated has that have invited investigation, that 2017/18. yet to pronounce itself on this matter. either didn’t happen or haven’t been According to an assessment in this It is governance occurrences such as made public, and the various officials draft strategy document, the pro- these that have tainted the image of involved have largely not been held curement system could possibly only the new procurement dispensation, as accountable for compromising the new function optimally at some point after alluded to in March 2020 by the then procurement system in its sensitive 2030, if capacity is developed appropri- deputy finance minister Natangwe early stages. ately over the intervening years. Ithete at the CPBN’s rebranding. If a culture of non-compliance or lax and slow compliance with the rules set down in law is allowed to fester in the public procurement system then the legal framework will ultimately fail to deliver the envisaged outcomes. Given what has already transpired over the three years since 1 April 2017, the signs are not encouraging. The way in which the provisions of the Public Procure- ment Act of 2015 appear to be disregarded or treated as optional by many Why this entities in the public sector is symptomatic of the state-wide culture character- ised by non-adherence to good governance principles. And, clearly, simply not enough is being done to safe-guard critical state functions, such as procure- matters ment, from being infected by this culture. 2 PROCUREMENT TRACKER Public procurement and COVID-19 Photo by Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash In mid-March 2020 Iipumbu Shiimi minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadh- was appointed new finance minister ila mentioned that procurement rules by president Hage Geingob, and one would need to be suspended so that of his first orders of business was purchases of essential goods and servic- to issue a directive to halt all public es could be sped up. procurement activities, except those But the 27 March 2020 directive needed to combat the COVID-19 by minister Shiimi and subsequent pandemic. statements do not indicate how public procurement would be handled during According to the directive issued on the state of emergency. 27 March 2020, Shiimi took the step of Finance ministry spokesperson drastically scaling down public procure- Tonateni Shidhudhu has indicated, ment activities in order to give effect to though, that all procurement would be the state of emergency and lockdown done using the emergency procurement measures announced by the president method, in line with section 33 of Part 5 on 18 March 2020. of the Public Procurement Act. In the directive addressed to ministers That said, according to Article 25 (b) and managers across the state sector, of the constitution, the proclamation Shiimi stated: “All procurement of goods, of a state of emergency should state works and services are hereby put on hold Image courtesy: neweralive.na exactly which laws and rights would be except for the procurement of essential suspended. goods, works and services that are aimed Finance minister Iipumbu Shiimi However, the regulations to the at curbing the COVID-19 pandemic. emergency proclamation, which were “A bid that has been advertised for gazetted on 28 March 2020 – a day after bidding before the date of commence- spread of COVID-19. Iipumbu Shiimi issued the directive ment of this directive, whether the bid In line with the minister’s directive, on suspending all public procurement in advert has been closed or not, the com- 30 March 2019 the Central Procurement line with section 73 of Part 12 of the law pletion of this bidding process has been Board of Namibia (CPBN) announced – do not mention public procurement or suspended until the lockdown period that it would be “closed with immedi- the suspension of the provisions of the has been lifted in line with the state of ate effect and until such time that the Public Procurement Act. emergency.” lockdown is lifted”. Rather, the regulations, in section 14 He goes on to direct that, similarly, make provision for ministers to issue di- all activities of the Review Panel had Procurement and the rectives relating to “(a) supplementing or also been suspended for the duration state of emergency amplifying on any provision of these regu- of the lockdown period and that the lations; or (b) ensuring that the objectives suspension of state-wide procure- When the state of emergency was of these regulations are attained”.