An Exploration of the Approval Process in the Public Procurement Act 663: Identifying the efficiencies and inefficiencies in procurement
Loading...
Date
2013-07-30
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
The implementation of the Public Procurement Act is very crucial to state institutions since it addresses loopholes within a public administrative system, which sometimes leads to the misapplication of state funds. The study therefore examines the Public Procurement Act in relation to the approval process as well as a robust exploration of the efficiencies and inefficiencies in procurement. As a nascent research, aimed at contributing to the relatively bourgeoning of studies of procurement, academic research and industrial perspectives served as a base to the study. This study adopted the quantitative survey research approach as its research design. This choice was premised on the fact that the study sought respondents’ views, opinions or perspectives on the issues under study. Owing to this, survey questionnaires served as an instrument in the general collection of data from the district and municipal assemblies. These questions were grouped in categories to collect data on nature of procurement systems, state of compliance, as well as the challenges in implementing public procurement. The data obtained during the survey was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential analysis techniques. It was revealed that, the delay in establishing full time operational Procurement units with the full complement of staff, inadequate contract management skills among some service provides, lack of sanctions to public officials for poor performance, delay in payment of works executed by service providers and low bid prices offered by bidders due to award of contract to the lowest evaluated bidder were some of the challenges that threatened the integrity of procurement in Ghana. The study recommended that, the government should endeavor to review the Act to limit the number of steps in procurement process so as to reduce the level of bureaucracy in the system. Bureaucracy delays the smooth procurement process and eventually affects public financial management since it adds more cost to contractors and government if they are to pay interest rate.
Description
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 Master Of Science (MSc) in Procurement Management.