By Donstance Koroma
The National Public Procurement Authority (NPPA) 2016 Annual Assessment Report has revealed that the Sierra Leone Water Company’s (SALWACO) three town’s water supply and sewage system project was not reported.
The report captured contract splitting on the award of a contract to Brunnenbau comrade for the supply of materials and the construction of borehole at SALWACO Headquarters, with the timeline for both contracts remaining the same.
According to the report, there was an apparent split of the contract into Le 138,600,000 and Le41,500,000 in order to avoid the use of open competitive bidding procedures.
The report concluded by pointing out that a total of thirty (30) procurement activities carried out of which twenty one (70%) were for the procurement of goods whilst nine (30%) were works related procurement with the total value of all procurement amounted to Le 1,077,291,934 and were founded by the government of Sierra Leone.
In another development, the National Public Procurement Authority (NPPA) 2016 assessment has also indicated that the Sierra Leone Road Transport Corporation (SLRTC) spent 622 million Leones on fuel annually.
The report further advised that since it is a considerable portion of the entity expenditure, SLRTC should consider negotiating volume discounts with its supplier instead of purchasing at pump price as this could result into substantial cost saving for the said entity.
The Corporation reported a total of twenty nine procurement activities, of which all was for the procurement of goods amounting to Le 281,451,500.
According to the assessment, SLRTC was among the few entities that prepared a procurement plan that was validated by NPPA, though most of the activities were slated for open competitive but this later changed into direct request for quotation (RFQ) or direct invoicing at execution.
Direct invoicing was used to undertake 65% of all procurement activities even though the values were substantially above the threshold for direct invoicing. This should be restricted to the purchase of very small items below the threshold request for quotation, which is below a million Leones due to its nature of operation, which requires frequent purchase of vehicles spares and consumables.
SLRTC should also strongly consider the use of framework contracts to help rationalize procurement of these items.