00:00Procuring entities, including the finance ministry, view the new public procurement system as burdensome.
00:06One of the concerns of the procuring entities, including Ministry of Finance and other ministries, departments, state bodies,
00:20was the concern for the onerous procedures that had to be followed, even if you were procuring minus goods and services.
00:39Simplified procedures were enacted for transactions less than $1 million.
00:44But the procurement regulator says the system as it is now still does not facilitate the ease of doing business in TNT.
00:51The environment in which the system is operating was not ready for it. That is being very honest.
01:02But it was a significant change from what existed before under the Central Tenders Board Act.
01:12This new regime requires procuring professionals or officers not to treat procurement as a transaction but as a strategic endeavor.
01:29It requires a lot of thought. It moved away from being under the CTB rules base to now being principle base.
01:39The act speaks to the good governance principles.
01:46She says the new regime requires procuring officers to treat with transactions not rule based but instead principle based.
01:54Readiness to operate under the new legislative framework is sadly lacking.
02:03We do not have the human resource capacity as it stands now throughout the public bodies to be able to engage with the system in a meaningful way.
02:20In addition, systems have not changed, particularly in ministries.
02:25Since the legislation has been enacted, the process, she says, has been stifled.
02:30But these challenges of public procurement reform, Ms. Khan says, are not unique to TNT.
02:36For suppliers and service providers, the system has been similarly burdensome.
02:40It required suppliers and contractors, including international, to put what they would consider to be highly confidential information, financial information.
02:53It required even smaller business to adhere to the same requirements as the larger ones.
03:03Aside from the high turnover of procurement officers, there is a dearth, she says, of procurement knowledge and also a fear of the penalties associated with the post.
03:12They move fairly quickly and then those that are below them who perhaps would have been trained with them, they are very reluctant to take on the responsibility.
03:25Because when they look at the penalties and the fines that could be imposed on a named procurement officer, a lot of them have said to us they do not want to be part of that.
03:36The OPR has noted thousands of sole-select and non-competitive procurement contracts opted for by some ministries.
