The Level of Compliance with the Transparency Provisions in the Public Procurement Act, 2003 (Act 663) by the Colleges Of Education in the Ashanti Region Of Ghana

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2015-02-23
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The Public Procurement Act, 2003 (Act 663) was introduced to improve financial management and judicious use of state resources. However, procurement entities in the public sector, especially the Colleges of Education, have been said to perform poorly in complying with the procurement provisions in the Act. Though transparency is one of the key objectives of Act 663, provisions which deal with it are not explicitly seen from the Act. This poses a challenge in assessing compliance by procurement entities. This study, therefore, highlights the transparency provisions and assesses the level of compliance by the Colleges of Education in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. A review of past research revealed an absence of a specific tool for assessment of the transparency provisions in Act 663. This lack was, therefore, addressed at the initial stages of the study. Tender Committees in the Colleges were then interviewed using the tool developed to ascertain the transparency provisions and questionnaires were used to collect data to measure the compliance level. The data were analysed through percentages, descriptive statistics, statistically significant tests and factor analysis using SPSS and Microsoft Excel. The study revealed that the transparency provisions in Act 663 constituted about 27% of the total provisions in the Act. Two tools, one based on parts provided for in the Act and the other based on themes identified across the various parts of the Act can be used to assess transparency. The average percentage level of compliance with the transparency provisions in Act 663 among the study population was 77.4%. The study concluded that the procurement entities in the Colleges of Education complied with the transparency provisions in Act 663 though they faced certain challenges which include high cost in advertising procurement, delays by the PPA in approving single-source procurement, low patronage of tender due to unattractive packages, and delays in procurement proceedings through ordinary mailing of correspondence. It is recommended that approval of single-source procurement should be expedited; attendance by tenderers to tender opening should be mandatory and cluster procurement should be encouraged.
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A Thesis Submitted to the Department of Building Technology, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of a degree of Master of Philosophy in Procurement Management, 2014
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