Authorities want tender procurement reforms
Keikantse Lesemela | Tuesday December 9, 2014 13:19
During a panel discussion organised by the Competition Authority (CA) on Friday, the Botswana Confederation of Commerce, Industry and Manpower (BOCCIM) highlighted the need to design procurement and present it in a way that would make specifications clear to bidders. The panel discussion, which was hosted in commemoration of the World Competition Day, was held under the theme, ‘Competition issues in Public Procurement’.
BOCCIM policy and advocacy director, Dichaba Molobe, stated that most tender specifications were not concise and clear.
“This gives bidders a lot of interpretations and thus maximises a wide range of prices, so we need to reform the procurement systems,” he said. Molobe argued that tenders advertised by government are over-engineered and demand a lot of expenses to bidders, noting that this contributed to escalated set prices.
“Bidders are asked to submit tests and samples so they will include these costs on their charges,” he said.
Molobe further said the time interval for the award of the tenders was too long and this gave room for price escalation.
“A tender can be awarded after a year and the payment will also take a long time to be processed, especially in government procurements. These are the issues that create price escalations,” he said. Molobe added that tender prescriptions required bidders to engage into a lot of work, which cost high amounts of money.
“The tender prescriptions are very costly to bidders and that is why they would charge high prices to cover up their expenses.”
“In some instances they are asked to do some tests and submit samples and this is very costly to them. It is easy to blame the private contractors but we need to sit down and find out the cause of the problems,” he explained.
For his part, CA Chief Executive Officer, Thula Kaira, said the private sector charged high prices for government procurements but less on other private procurement.
“The private sector should ensure that there is effective competition not to bid in a collusive manner. The prices they charge private agencies are reasonable but is higher for public procurement. We need the private sector to participate at economic prices not inflated prices,” he said.
He further stated that in most cases the designs of public sector tenders facilitate the high prices from the private sector, urging that the government should ensure that they do not expose the budget prices in tender prescriptions because bidders would charge looking at the budget capacity not the quality of the job. Kaira also said the authority had educated both government and the private sector on how to design a tender, in order to promote competition and fair play in the economy.
“Tenders should not be designed in a collusive manner. If the services required can not be found locally, there has to be prescriptions on how the international companies can partner with local companies so that they would not be discouraged to bid for the tender,” he said.
The Competition Act of Botswana was enacted in December 2009 as the first formal legal instrument in the country to systematise economy competition rules.