THINKING ALOUD : Procurement officer, a new most lucrative career

Pofessor Zulfiqarali Premji

What you need to know:

I recall there was neither such a post as procurement officer nor any such training. Now I see procurement officers in each institution and they are high in demand. Sometimes back a shortcut to riches was to become a traffic officer and now it is to be a procurement officer.

In the 1960s when you finished Form 4, you were either chosen to go to Form 5 or get a posting in a public institution.

I recall there was neither such a post as procurement officer nor any such training. Now I see procurement officers in each institution and they are high in demand. Sometimes back a shortcut to riches was to become a traffic officer and now it is to be a procurement officer.

I once attended a 5-day workshop at Ubungo Plaza organised by the Public Procurement Regulatory authority (PPRA) to sensitise civil servants—that was my first encounter with procurement officers.

Immediately during the workshop it became obvious that there were a lot of opportunities for corruption and enriching one self. Later on while working I had to interact with procurement department, thus in this article I will outline some of my experiences in procurement in a public institution.

In my line of work I had mainly 2 categories of procurement. First the usual office needs like paper, stationery and at times airline tickets, laptops and office furniture.

The procurement personnel had their own suppliers or maybe they were the institutionally approved suppliers and in most cases what I had requested was not exactly what they purchased and the price paid was always much higher maybe by about 200 to 300 per cent.

Obviously the system allowed this hence the procurement personnel as well as the supplier were all benefiting financially, this is what the President refers to as “surviving on deals”. The second category was a bit complex; it was scientific equipment, which in most cases was not available locally.

It took a lot of time and patience but in the end my request was fulfilled and the precise equipment ordered was delivered. I think this was not beneficial to the procurement officers. However at the institution level there were more categories that were controversial and highly lucrative.

I wanted to paint my research building and went through the procurement procedure-was told it would cost at that time something like twenty million shillings. Using the institutional painters I did the same job and I paid only two million shillings and the job was done over the weekend and the quality was much better. At that time all the university buildings were being painted at the cost of almost two hundred million.

There are many such examples all over the public institutions. Painting, landscape etc. is always done simultaneously at the work place and at the CEO’s house. This is not unique to Tanzania-last year in Kenya one wheelbarrow was bought for a hundred thousand Kenya shillings instead of three thousand and the minister defended that it was of a special metal. Any construction work like building a new block is always a viable project to enrich one self.

The categories that are complex and potential for malpractice include purchases that require specialized research and development, such as newly designed military aircraft. Purchases of complex, special purpose projects, such as dams or port facilities that do not involve advances in technology but require managerial and organisational skills.

Purchases of standard products sold in open markets, such as motor vehicles or medical supplies (off-the shelf purchase) and customised versions of products otherwise available in open markets, such as special purpose computer systems or fleets of police cars.

Fortunately there are a lot of research and evaluation reports available to assess effectiveness and efficiency of national procurement systems. There has also been a lot of improvement in the system and procedures are in place to minimize corruption. The use of technology has also helped a lot to improve efficiency and also make the whole process more transparent.

The chair of institutional tender board does not answer to the CEO but is appointed by the CEO. The chair will usually be a village mate of the CEO, former classmate and thus there is a network in place and they all speak the same language of how to rip the institution funds and still be within the legal boundaries.

There is a core group of within like head of HR, head of planning and development, head of finance they form the network. At times this network would also include Chair of board of trustee who maybe a presidential appointee. They work together, protect each other and using the system enrich themselves, its very difficult for an outsider to capture these inconsistencies thus despite all the improvements, balances and checks in the procurement processes, corruption is still thriving and procurement career is becoming more popular. Unfortunately so far strategies to transform the alleged practices of a state administration from corrupt to honest and clean have failed in most cases.

Corruption in public procurement makes the officials or the politicians in charge: purchase goods or services from the best briber, instead of choosing the best price-quality combination. The result may be construction projects several times as costly as necessary, or the acquisition of goods not actually needed.

As an illustrating example Italian economists found that the cost of several major public construction projects fell dramatically after the anti-corruption investigations in the early nineties.

The construction cost of the Milan subway fell from $227m per km in 1991 to $97m in 1995. The cost of a rail link fell from $54m pkm to $26 million, and a new airport terminal is estimated to cost $1.3bn instead of $3.2 billion

The author is a retired Muhas professor. He now lives in Canada. He can be reached via [email protected]

Hence, when aggregated to a macro-economic level non-optimal choices of contractors can have noticeable effects on the economy.

The procurement policy should be a mix of decentralized and centralized system. Based on the size and needs of an institution there should be a curb or ceiling on the amount that the institution can approve, anything beyond the ceiling has to go to a centralized tender board which is very closely monitored. Corruption is rarely a one-sector phenomenon, occurring only in one institution of the state, or at one level of the bureaucratic hierarchy. Trying to curb corruption by implementing anti-corruption measures into the procurement procedures can be rewarding to the economic and the procurement system is a good place to start a more comprehensive anti- corruption reform.

Zulfiqarali Premji is a retired MUHAS professor. His career spans over 40 years in academia, research and public health. He has authored over 100 publications. He resides in Canada. He can be reached via [email protected]