The Deputy Minority Leader, James Kludze Avedzi has urged caution on government’s decision to totally forgo the use of sole-sourcing in the award of government contracts. The New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration accused the Mahama administration of having a voracious appetite for sole sourcing of contracts which were inflated at times.
The NPP argued that, sole sourcing allowed corruption, and benefited a privileged few in the Mahama government adding that an Akufo-Addo government will eschew such practice.
But according to the Former Chairman of Parliament’s Finance Committee, this choice of the government may delay critical projects since sole-sourcing has its own benefits.
This he said is because going through the normal tendering process could “sometimes take up to about six months with the minimum being three months.”
“So anything you want to procure you have to go through these processes and its going to make governance so difficult for them. And because that is what have been saying let me not have anything against that. I wish them well but I have my doubts and I believe that it is going to put them in a tight corner and it will even have negative effects on this country,” he added.
MP calls for more power for procurement authority
The Deputy Majority Leader of Parliament, Adwoa Safo, had earlier called for the amendment of the public procurement act to give the Procurement Authority, the powers to conduct value for money auditing on sole-sourced projects.
She described as sad, revelations by the Auditor General’s annual reports that 80 percent of the procurement malpractices are centered on sole sourcing.
“From 2012 to 2014 when I was on the public accounts committee, about 80% of their recommendations to parliament are procurement malpractices… So I think that if the law is there, you need also a policy direction. And I think that, that is the first step that the president has given us in his state of the nation address.”
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