The Central Procurement Board of Namibia says it is derailed by occurrences of fraudulent tender document submissions, in addition to litigation processes related to appeals.
This comes as the Ministry of Finance and Public Enterprises is planning to amend and strengthen its Procurement Act on debarment of incompetent or transgressing companies, arguing that in its current form, it’s not very effective.
The Chairperson and Acting Administrator of CPBN Amon Ngavetene hinted that matters related to fraud are time-consuming in awarding tenders because the Board has to fact-check and wait for litigation outcomes in order to move forward.
“As the board we have tried our best level to strengthen the operations of CPBN to avoid any corrupt and irregularities happening. But it is difficult to seal all loopholes and among them the submission of fraudulent documents or collusion. However, as the board we are tasked with fact-checking which is a cumbersome process of verifying, thus it contributes to delays in finalisation of awards,” Ngavetene said.
In the absence of those obstacles, Ngavetene said CPBN can review tenders within 30 days, as opposed to before when such processes would take months.
“Those who are found to have transgressed are often submitted to the review panel with the view of banning such companies from participating in tendering for a period of time because they are either incompetent, committed fraud or colluded,” he said.
Meanwhile, CPBN spokesperson Johanna Kambala said the effectiveness of debarment is not satisfactory, citing that it has loopholes open for exploitation.
“You will find that debarment may only apply to a company, but what happens next is that the owner can easily open another company and continues to partake in tendering yet they are incompetent, thus it needs to be strengthened,” she suggested.
In that regard, Esther Moonde, the Chief Learning and Development Officer under the Procurement Policy Unit in the Ministry of Finance said, there are plans to have the Debarment Act amended.
“Soon the Act will be amended and reformed so that the debarment can be comprehensive and include blacklisting individuals and companies who are found wanting,” said Moonde.
In the same vein, she bemoaned the lack of cooperation from Public Entities who are not forthcoming to report companies that are underperforming.
Conquering with the assertion, Ngavetene explained that public entities should always report to the review panel, who would then interrogate the matter and make a decision, and not directly to CPBN.
“This is our biggest challenge … they only promise to come forth but they don’t. As a result, we have companies out there still getting tenders undeserving due to their incompetence. As it stands, we only have very few who are on debarment,” she stated.
Moonde thus advised public entities to make use of the Electronic Government Procurement Portal to see which companies debarred, thus making it easy to eliminate them.
Procurement Policy Unit is besieged with the responsibility of overseeing and investigating irregular bidding procedures.
These revelations were made during CPBN media induction, to which the board sought to acquaint journalists with its operations, as well as what the Procurement Act entails.
During the event, Ngavetene reiterated that CPBN has tremendously moved to quell corruption at the entities.
“Most of the complaints against the Board are not about corruption, but most often by bidders who lost out. Mostly it is a result of specification misinterpretation.
