In an effort to ease procurement and disposal of public assets, the minister of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, Matia Kasaija on behalf of government has announced the amendment of Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Asset (PPDA) regulations.
The new PPDA regulations which apply to all government entities and agencies at central and local government come effective on 5th February,2024.
“ Effective 5th February,2024, the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Asset systems in Uganda shall be conducted in accordance with the PPDA Act 2003 and the PPDA Regulations 2023, as amended and the retained PPDA regulations 2014.’’ A statement issued by the minister reads in parts.
The amended regulations will now allow government to pay even 100% of the procurement funds to the suppliers as opposed to the 30% as the old policy regulations. However, the Secretary to the National Treasure is given the mandate to allow the 100% payment to the supplier depending on situations like a supplier who is a monopoly and magnitude of the public need.
On the issue of fueling corruption tendencies when implementing 100% payment for government supplies, the PPDA Executive Director Benson Turamye said that not in all supplies this will apply. It will only apply to those supplies where government gets difficulty with the suppliers who require 100% payment due to their kind of monopoly tendencies.
He also said this may apply mostly on supplies like medical or Aircraft and will help to eliminate middlemen who have been taking a sizeable amount of funds, thus government will be saving.
The new regulations provide for the reduction in evaluation periods where for the open International bids, the Lead Time has been reduced from 110 working days to 60 working days and this is done with the purposes or avoiding unnecessary delays in procurements.
Open Domestic Lead Time has also been reduced from 100 working days to only 45 working days while for consultancy from 100 to 68 working days for instance teaching and medical services. While for supplies and non- consultancy services, from 20 to 10 working days. The notification period for opening of financial proposals has also been reduced from 5 to only 3 working days.
Contract renewals in the amended regulations will be acceptable once and where contracts are to be renewed more than once, prior approval must be sought from the Permanent Secretary/ Secretary to the Treasury, Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development.
By George Bukenya