Malpractices in public procurement of works contract in Ghana

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Date
2014-08-14
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Abstract
The World Bank defines Public Procurement as a process by which governments and other publicly-funded entities acquire goods, works, and services needed to implement public projects. A study by the World Bank reported that about 50-70% of the national budget (after personal emoluments) is procurement related. Therefore an efficient public procurement system could ensure value for money in government expenditure, which is essential to a country facing enormous developmental challenges and to obtain value for money in government expenditure through procurement, the public procurement Act 663 was enacted in 2003. This was to regulate and ensure efficiency in public procurement. Because of huge amount of resources which go into the acquisition of infrastructural needs, that sector public procurement has been identified to top the list of sectors with high opportunities for corruption and with high significant cases of malpractices and irregularities The end effect is that government is unable to satisfy its infrastructural needs. Hence, this study was conducted to identify the malpractices which often occur in public procurement process of works contracts with the view to suggesting ways to improving the integrity and transparency of the process as well as reduce the scope of malpractices in the procurement. A questionnaire survey was conducted. The purposive approach was adopted with sample size of 30 made up of officers who were involved in procurement processes and contractors working in District Assembly. Out of 30 questionnaires issued out, 28 were received and analyzed. The outcome of the findings revealed that, procurement entities do not prepare quarterly updates, deliberate limit competition, members of tender approval committee also serve on evaluation panel, issues of conflict of interest, unsuccessful tenders not communicated to, and bulk breaking of procurement orders and no approval of the board is sought for adopting noncompetitive methods. Hence there is the need to develop a comprehensive and enforceable code of ethics for procurement officials, review the Act to limit the number of steps in tender processing to reduce the level of bureaucracy in the process as well as recruit well qualified professional to manage procurement. It is expected that the findings of the study could be used as the foundation for developing and improving the integrity of the procurement process.
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A research thesis submitted to the Department of Building Technology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of a degree of Master of Science Procurement Management,
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