WE NEED ACCOUNTABILITY WITH EFFICIENCY (JULY 14, 2010)

THE incidence of corruption is a menace to all societies. It is largely so because it is a practice or an act perpetrated, supported and sustained by human beings.
In so far as there are and will continue to be greedy and selfish human beings in society, this canker will not be extinguished.
In the face of this reality, society’s best antidote is to institute mechanisms to check and manage it with the view to exacting sanctions on those found culpable. This, among others, is to help ensure that society does not unduly suffer from the want of resources from unbridled greed and avarice on the part of a few of its members.
The enactment of the Procurement Act has been one way of dealing with the haemorrhage of public resources and their being siphoned into private pockets.
It is estimated world-wide that billions of dollars of state resources are lost annually due to procurement fraud and that that whopping amount of money could match or even outstrip the financial assistance to developing countries.
It is, therefore, a matter of course that the Procurement Act, Act 663, is targeted at ensuring adherence to due process, a system of transparency and fairness and prevalence of value for money in the utilisation of public resources.
Given the rather huge quantum of state resources involved in the public procurement process, it is important that safeguards, as well as checks and balances, are carried out to protect those resources from being siphoned by politicians, public officials and private individuals.
This notwithstanding, we are not oblivious of the potential or even latent drawback to national development that the operation of the Procurement Act has posed since its enactment in 2003.
One of the key areas of concern in this regard is the relatively long delay involved in the working of the system.
It is estimated that carrying through one transaction under this system takes, on a conservative basis, between one and a half and two months.
This, of course, not only introduces significant delay in the execution of government projects and programmes but also comes along with additional cost which unduly goes to overburden taxpayers.
Given this delay in the award of contracts and the execution of projects, it stands to reason that the disbursement of funds will also be delayed, local enterprises hindered, job creation adversely impacted and the state or national interest not maximised.
It is on the basis of the above that we give a qualified endorsement to President John Evans Atta Mills’s directive to the Finance Ministry to initiate the process for the possible review of the Procurement Law.
We believe that any system or measure that unduly sacrifices efficiency and also loses significant time cannot confer maximum benefit on society.
This explains why we think the act ought to be looked at again to rectify those shortcomings.
Nevertheless, we wish to urge that in the bid to fashion out amendments to inject more dynamism and efficiency into the operations of the Procurement Law, care must be taken not to erode aspects of the law that safeguard transparency, fairness, due process, accountability and other positive attributes that constitute a barrier to the theft of state resources.
We believe that it is possible to strike a healthy balance between transparency, fairness and accountability, on the one hand, and injecting into the system efficiency and more enhanced time management, on the other, for the overall public good and interest.