The Sunday Mail
Martin Kadzere
The majority of public entities have complied with new procurement regulations, which require them to register with Procurement Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (PRAZ).
The compliance is in line with the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Act, which dictates that procuring entities must register with the authority, PRAZ chief executive Mr Nyasha Chizu told The Sunday Mail Business last week.
While the new law requires procuring entities to register with PRAZ, most of the public entities had been reluctant to comply.This often resulted in non-performance of public contracts
“There was a significant improvement; we now have very few entities that are not yet compliant,” said Mr Chizu. He said the authority was already working on new regulations to deal with non-compliance as well as effective monitoring and evaluation.
“We are hoping by the end of this first quarter our regulations will be out,” he said.
PRAZ is the successor authority of the State Procurement Board created through an Act of Parliament to supervise public procurement. Its formation followed alleged fraudulent awarding of public contracts to incompetent contractors by the SPB.
Meanwhile, all contracts related to infrastructure-above $10 million-will now require approval from the Treasury to allow for minimum safeguards to be embedded in the contracts.
Before, the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development was only looking at projects whose payments were directly done through the Treasury. Now this has extended to all contracts within the public sector, including parastatals, which will need to have their projects above $10 million approved by the Ministry of Finance.
“This policy is significant because it also looks at national strategic fit (of the projects),” said Mr Chizu.
Also, public contracts awards that have been dormant for more than two years or partially implemented will be re-evaluated to determine their national strategic fit as well as reviewing the scope and price.
The new policy is also being derived from the new Act, which prioritises effective management of public contracts unlike the old procurement law whose provisions were just limited to awarding tenders.
There are several non-performing EPC contracts awarded by the Government particularly in the energy sector. These include the $200 million Gwanda solar project awarded to Intratreck Zimbabwe and $120 million emergency power plant in Mutare.
“What the Government has now introduced is the element that all public contracts that were awarded need to be reviewed in terms of strategic fit because there are some projects, which might not be necessary because of the passage of time,” said Mr Chizu.
“The other element is that technology is changing. So some of the specifications of the projects might no longer speak to the technology prevailing. Look at the solar power stations.
“At the time of award, the prices were higher, as technology improves the price reduces. So all these things need to be reviewed as otherwise if we just go with the project we would unnecessarily add costs to the public sector by just accepting a project because it was awarded at $100 million two years ago when costs and technology have changed. So there is now need to re-scope and review price of the project.”
Mr Chizu said PRAZ would soon write letters to all procurement entities such as line ministries requesting update of the contacts that were awarded and their current status.
