empwerSierra Leone News: NPPA Empowers Public Officials

By Alhaji Dauda

The National Public Procurement Authority (NPPA) is the statutory institution charged with the responsibility of regulating all public procurement processes undertaken by public institutions in the country.

In line with its mandate, the NPPA recent commenced training of officials of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) as well as Local Councils across the country on procurement.

The training was geared towards ensuring that procurement officers and procurement authorities are well positioned to effectively, efficiently and transparently undertake or conduct procurement activities.

According to the Chief Executive Officer of NPPA, Ibrahim Brima Swarray, the training sessions is targeting beneficiaries in all in the regions in the country starting with those in Freetown. He disclosed that the training started on Monday July 28, 2019, and will be cascaded subsequently in the regions.

CEO Swarray underscored that, the NPPA does not only play its traditional role of regulating procurement processes, but also serve as an adviser to government in providing guidance as to whether certain procurement plans or requests must be endorsed or not. “This is very strategic because it is assumed that 70% of Government’s revenue generated from taxes and donor support are primarily spent on procurement of goods, services and works. It therefore makes sense that the Government should be properly informed before action is taken in order to get value for money,” he said.

He said that for effective advice to transpire there must be dependable and reliable data which is why they decided to embark on getting reliable statistical data on procurement.

He noted that through data that is meticulously collected, they could to determine the top 10 public institutions, contractors, suppliers that have done exceptionally well in terms of procurement within a specified period of time as well as those items that government spends the highest amount of money on.

He said in the past government used to spend up Le6 to 7 million only on papers, billions to purchase computers which, according to him, should not be the case.