Public Procurement Governance: Toward an Anti-corruption Framework for Public Procurement in Uganda

Abstract

For most developing countries, public procurement is a fertile ground for corruption in Government. In Uganda, specifically, corruption in public procurement involves the abuse of the procurement processes and diverting from established legal frameworks takes a multitude of forms. It is perpetuated procurement planning distortions, through supplier collusion, dodgy computation of costs by evaluation teams, poor quality goods and services delivered, pitiable performance of civil and construction works etc. These and many other manifestations suggest that corruption has a significant impact, not just in delivery of public services, but it also inhibits development of the national economy and has significantly inhibited good governance in the country.

This chapter develops a conceptual framework on the vitality of public procurement for the good governance agenda and demonstrated the primacy of public procurement for good governance. It also evaluates more pertinently, the sufficiency of existing anti-corruption mechanisms in addressing corruption challenges in public procurement in Uganda. The chapter notes the inefficiency of a number of anti?corruption initiatives in Uganda and observes the lack of effective coordination of anti?corruption efforts within the public sector and among the various state and sector actors. This deficiency constitutes the main reason why the corruption battle is almost lost. The chapter concludes with a proposed framework to address the public procurement corruption malaise, with a set of critical success factors (CSFs) that government can apply in striking against the corruption dilemma.