Treasury, PPRA finalising rules for procurement law

Photo: Courtesy of PPRA

Amin Mcharo, the PPRA director of capacity building and advisory services.

By Guardian Reporter 

THE Treasury in collaboration with the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) is in the...

final stages of preparing revised public procurement regulations in order to align them with the Public Procurement Act 2023.

Amin Mcharo, the PPRA director of capacity building and advisory services, said this here yesterday in a review of PPRA work for the past three years, where he affirmed that the new law has created a friendly environment in ensuring value for money in public procurement.

This includes reducing tender process time, he said, citing the fact that so far a total of 29trn/- has been spent within the National e-Procurement System of Tanzania (NeST).

This involves the procurement of goods, services and construction works where until yesterday contracts valued at more than 5.14trn/- have been awarded to bidders, he said.

The law has also removed the requirement to increase the penalty for companies closed abroad, set more friendly conditions for special groups, youth, women and the elderly in participating in public tenders, as well as increasing preferential opportunities for local companies, he elaborated.

Similarly improved is linking the entire procurement and supply chain and the use of cap prices for products and services with cap prices, he said, specifying that the new law has reduced the long queue of approvals in tender processes.

The creation and submission of public procurement evaluation reports to the president as well as setting mandatory conditions to process public tenders via an electronic procurement system is also beneficial, he said.

It has helped in increasing transparency, efficiency and reducing chances of underhand dealings in public tenders he said, also pointing at a limit set for the  use of local resources when implementing construction projects.

Under NeST, a total of 18,101 bidders registered, while the system has been connected to 17 government stakeholder systems to increase efficiency, save time and costs of procurement, control fraud, corruption and preventing immorality, he stated.

Until February 2024, contract awards worth 1.95bn/- had been given to special groups through public tenders announced by procuring institutions via NeST, he said, explaining that youth groups obtained contract awards valued at 709m/-, women 1.2bn/- and the elderly got 78.3m/- worth of contracts.

Members of the public need to register in the NeST system and apply for various tenders announced by the government from time to time, adhering to conditions set before sending applications, he cautioned.

“It is also important for those who secure the tenders to implement them well and faithfully in order to be able to get others in the future,” he added