Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has urged public officials not to abuse sole sourcing when they are awarding government contracts.
Speaking at a six-day training on procurement, the vice president cautioned against abusing the policy stating: “We have seen and heard of incidences of the abuse of procurement processes, especially on the reliance on the infamous sole sourcing approach. Sole sourcing is actually quite legal and there are circumstances under which it is necessary, but it should not be abused.”
According to him, the training aims at ensuring that rules and regulations governing sole-sourcing are not flouted by the appointees in the Akufo-Addo-led government.
He said: “Ghana, like most evolving economies, has fully adopted the decentralised system of public procurement of goods and services and works since the mid-2000s as part of the public financial reforms. However, the rules and regulations of public procurement in Ghana have been occasionally flouted by government appointees and public servants who are supposed to be the great custodians of the public procurement law.
“I’ve had the occasion in the past when we were in opposition to list and discuss some of such infractions of the law. Given the non-negotiable significance of public procurement in the governance of our country and the resounding victory granted by the good people of Ghana on the aegis of the trust that the NPP government is more capable of handling corruption head-on, the four month-old government of Nana Akufo-Addo is desirous of doing government business on the right footing, hence this special training programme designed to build the capacity of government appointees and heads of institutions on the essential provisions of the public procurement law, the PFM law and the budget appropriation processes in order to avoid some of the mistakes of the past and achieve more tangible development results for Ghana.”
The Minister of State at the presidency in charge of procurement, Adwoa Safo, said sole-sourcing even though legal in some cases is the single “most abused policy ever introduced by government and we are aware of how the previous government unjustifiably took advantage of sole-sourcing, a method under the law, to loot state money”.
