In the Finance minister’s very detailed description of the current state of Zimbabwe’s economy in Parliament, expectations were indirectly shouldered to the public sector’s purchasing and supply function.
The minister flashed out lack of procurement planning in the government institutions as he reported on implementation gap of projects where Treasury released funding.
The rate of project implementation for the period under review dropped to 20–25% from 35–40% of annual implementation target compared to the same period in 2010.
Implementation rate reflected on the utilisation rate of disbursed funds that emanate from Treasury and Infrastructure Development Bank of Zimbabwe. This inevitably affected downstream industrial activities as the work that was supposed to have been carried out on major infrastructural projects had a considerable bearing on the private sector through:
The business sectors’ prospects of receiving services of improved quality and dependability. The minister identified challenges related to tender procedures as a contributory factor to slow project implementation. Progress on most projects was slowed on account of several challenges described from a procurement perspective as:
The government departments’ lack of technical capacity to manage project procurement. This is against the background that most procurement units were not affected by brain drain, but reportedly failed to assist in project planning, procurement and contract management due to lack of capacity.
The minister pinned hopes of the macroeconomical development on organised procurement planning. Success of the agricultural sector would only be achieved if the rate of preparedness was high.
Agriculture sector’s input availability from whatever means was critical. Inputs were sourced using open markets, contract farming as well as farmers’ resources.
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In addition to agricultural sector, procurement function had a huge burden to utilise the programmatic multi-donor trust fund that was meant to rehabilitate works in some key sectors of the economy. The fund was targeting improving water and sanitation and the power generation sector.
There was also an introduction of import duty on essential commodities. The measure is a two-pronged approach in that it can be used to stimulate the “Buy Zimbabwe Campaign” by creating demand for local products through adding costs to cheaper imports and stimulate local production.
On the other hand, if the local industry fails to respond competitively, consumers may be exposed to shortages and would have to bear higher imports costs. Procurement remained a major source of leakage in the implementation and utilisation of project resources. In some cases, the process had been used as a source of self-enrichment and rent seeking for suppliers and public officials.
The government was quoted higher prices compared to other customers and the practice was becoming more prevalent. This was done in some cases with the collusion of public officials to the detriment of public service delivery.
In that regard, the need to build stronger capacities in public procurement remained critical, particularly in view of the need to design and negotiate public-private partnership contracts that have the potential of improving infrastructure development.
In addition to strengthening government procurement structures and laws, the need for professionalising procurement through enactment of a purchasing and supply council of Zimbabwe responsible for licensing and regulating buyers cannot be overemphasised.
