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TIZ urges sealing of loopholes in government procurement

TIZ urges sealing of loopholes in government procurement
By Bright Mukwasa
Mon 13 Feb. 2012, 12:59 CAT

THE current legal and regulatory procurement frameworks are not inadequate to promote transparency and accountability in the procurement process, says TIZ.

Appearing before a parliamentary committee on legal affairs, governance, human rights and gender matters and child affairs last week, Transparency International Zambia executive director Goodwell Lungu, represented by his good governance programmes officer Francis Mwale, said the current legal and regulatory frameworks were not properly enforced.

"The Public Procurement law and the Budget and Finance Act of the government of Zambia require that procurement plans and contract award information is published in public media in the interest of fiscal transparency and accountability. However, information on contract and awards are not in the public domain," Lungu said.

"Access to contract information by stakeholders such as CSOs (civil society organisations) involved in contract monitoring is limited.

Partly this is due to poor disclosure and dissemination of relevant contract details which is compounded by the lack of an access to information Act so as to allow stakeholders to access relevant materials on procurement contracts and works."

Lungu said there was need for the access to information law to help monitoring contract performance.

He said the agreements signed between the companies and individuals with the government tended to give companies incentives to default the contract because they were done in secrecy and that was what had caused increased levels of the misappropriation of funds and corruption in the procurement process over the past years.

Lungu also said there was need to tighten the loopholes in the public expenditure management system which caused government to lose huge sums of money through leakages.

Labels: PROCUREMENT SYSTEMS, TIZ, TRANSPARANCY

posted by MrK @ 2:59 PM