×
NewsDay

AMH is an independent media house free from political ties or outside influence. We have four newspapers: The Zimbabwe Independent, a business weekly published every Friday, The Standard, a weekly published every Sunday, and Southern and NewsDay, our daily newspapers. Each has an online edition.

What are the motivators of procurement corruption?

Business
MANY assume that low pay, less authority to make procurement decisions and more discretion of procurement officers is the major source of procurement corruption.

MANY assume that low pay, less authority to make procurement decisions and more discretion of procurement officers is the major source of procurement corruption.

Procurement staff is generally ranked low in organisations where they are subordinated to the finance and administration function.

Rank has an effect on the level of remuneration. It has direct impact on the level of authority and last but not least, the level of discretion.

Non-recognition of procurement staff affects the integrity of the office creating an opportunity for corruption.

It must be noted that pay is not the motivator of corruption because they are highly paid staff in procurement that are still involved. Procurement therefore provides an opportunity for corruption in circumstances where the pay is very low.

The officer is thereby capable of making additional money for sustenance through corruption. It must be emphasised that low pay does not promote corruption in general, as there are other lowly-paid professional in procurement that are not corrupt.

On the other hand, more laws and more controls are generally regarded as the means to control corruption.

To the contrary, more regulations are viewed as a cause for corruption. Some countries like Indonesian realised the need to regulate their procurement staff by introducing a “licence to practice”. The regulations required undertaking some specific tests in order to acquire the licence.

Though the examination was of a general nature and simplified, procurement officers opted to fail the test to avoid taking up the practice.

There was no motivation for the regulation hence the deliberate failures. Licence to practice should be linked to professionalism to strengthen the regulations to fight corruption.

Authority to make procurement decisions is another source of procurement fraud. Bribes are used to motivate the staff with authority for procurement decisions to sway competition.

Where decisions are done by committees, the challenge is that authority of the procurement officer is diluted. In those circumstances, responsibility and accountability are further diluted, and the “buck does not stop”.

In addition to low pay and authority is the issue of discretion as a major source of procurement corruption.

Discretion is the ability to consider circumstances independently in a procurement decision-making process to some extent, setting aside evaluation criteria to favour certain bidders. Exercise of discretion is a motivator of corruption. This is compounded by the fact that one cannot eliminate the human contact in a procurement process.

This mainly because procurement is an art, not a science, thereby requiring some high degree of human contact to decide on different circumstances that are faced by the business. In this case, the problem is not the presence of discretion, but the abuse of discretion that fuels corruption.

Procurement is generally undertaken using the bureaucracy. This brings challenges of complexity where some countries are struggling with facilitation payment and bribes.

Facilitation payment is paid to an officer to do his job expeditiously while bribes are payments to an officer to motivate them to do what they are not supposed to do.

The relationship of the policymaker — the minister — and the civil servant — the administrator — is pertinent to manage corruption. If government sets up a policy, this requires redefining administrative systems to implement the policy.

The government will be interested in the results that the civil service sets up the system to achieve the policy. In many cases, the interest of the policymaker and the civil servant may run parallel thereby fuelling corruption.

Nyasha Chizu is a Fellow of the CIPS writing in his personal capacity. Feedback:

[email protected]; Skype: nyasha.chizu