The Kenya government loses about one third of the national budget to corruption, with 80 percent of all corruption cases before the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission being about procurement1. According to the World Bank, in order to secure a government contract, a gift whose value represents 8 to 10 percent of the contract amount is expected, while, according to the Institute for Development Studies manufacturing firms in Kenya spend an average of 14 percent of the value of government contracts on kick-backs.
It is also estimated that procurement entities are buying goods and services at an average of 60 percent above the prevailing market price4. Evidently, corruption remains pervasive in procurement processes.
Given the level of haemorrhaging of public resources at the national level, the Africa Centre for Open Governance (AfriCOG) sought to highlight the constitutional, statutory and institutional frameworks of procurement in Kenya while reviewing the general procurement performance of three selected counties, Wajir, Mombasa and Machakos, in the 2013/2014 financial year.
The main objective of the study is to generally highlight transparency and accountability concerns in the procurement processes in the three counties, which would in turn highlight the causes and consequences of procurement challenges experienced. The work also aims to make recommendations for county governments to consider, which will prevent the loss of public funds, even as they enhance public service delivery. The three counties were selected mainly on the basis of absorption rates of development funds and their location in the country for purposes of diversity.
With regard to legislative and institutional frameworks for procurement, Kenya has undergone significant development in the past three decades. It came from being a system with weak regulations in the 1960s to one regulated by Treasury Circulars between the 1970s and 1990s. In 2005, the Public Procurement and Disposals Act (PPDA) was enacted, becoming operational on1January 2007. However, the PPDA fails to provide strong enforcement mechanisms. Despite the enactment and commencement of procurement regulations, Kenyan public procurement continues to be marred by corruption scandals.
Other studies confirm that the PPDA’s objectives of weeding out inefficiencies in the procurement process, removing patterns of abuse, and meeting the desire of the public purchaser to obtain adequate value for the expenditure of public funds, have never been fully achieved in practice. Although procedures supporting the systematic planning of procurement are well established, they are not always complied with.