Quick facts
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Country: Ethiopia |
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Year of assessment: July 2019 to June 2020 |
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Procurement value: Official data is not available. But different studies show that public is more than 60% of government budget. |
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Principal organisation: Public Procurement and Property Authority |
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Main partners: Worls Bank (WB), African Development Bank (AfDB), European Union, UK AID, Italian Agency for Development Cooperation, and Austrian Development Cooperation. |
Background
Over the last many years, the GOE in collaboration with Development Partners (DPs) have taken measures to establish and improve public procurement system. As a result, basic public procurement systems and capacity has been established at all levels of the Government (Federal, Regional, and Local levels). Recently, the procurement reform has focused on modernizing the procurement system and improving procurement performance and efficiency. However, the procurement performance continued to face serious challenges. There has been capacity limitation, inconsistent organization and conflicting roles in the institutions supporting the procurement function. To address the gap and to inform the public procurement reform with empirical data, the GOE in collaboration with DPs has decided to carry out an assessment of the public procurement system using MAPS.
In Ethiopia, the Federal government and each of the Regional States (currently 12 in number) and 2 City Administrations have established their own procurement legal/ regulatory framework and capacity. The procurement operation both at federal and regional level follows a mix of decentralized and centralized structure. Each of the public bodies are mandated to establish procurement capacity and undertake procurement to meet their own requirements. In addition, the federal government and the regional states have each established agencies that manage centralized framework agreements for procurement of common use goods. The twin emergencies (COVID-19 and the locust plague) that arose during the MAPS assessment provided an opportunity to assess the ability of the procurement system to respond to critical emergency situations and to identify areas for improvement.
Process
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The Ethiopian MAPS assessment covered the procurement systems and performance at the federal government and each of the 3 regional and 1 city administration. The report included one main report and five matrices with a separate matrix for the federal government and each of the 3 regional states and 1 city administration. Thus, it was like conducting five assessments under one MAPS assessment. The assessment covered 38 procuring entities at federal, subnational and local level, 35 regulatory and other institutions mainly finance offices, external audit agencies, procurement regulatory agencies/departments, anticorruption institutions operating at federal, subnational and local levels. To assess the performance of the systems, the review included 301 bidding processes, resulting in 531 contracts with 1325 invoices. A comprehensive stakeholder’s analysis was carried out as part of the assessment based on level of influence and engagement in procurement reform. At the last phase of the assessment, due to the COVID restrictions, the assessment team was not able to visit procuring entities in person and collect data. However, the team implemented different mechanisms to tackle the challenge including resorting to virtual data collection through telephone and electronic means. |
Key results and impacts
The main recommendations in the assessment were:
- Modernize the public procurement legal framework
- Enhance transparency through improved legislation and practice
- Improve the capacity of procurement regulatory institutions
- Introduce the involvement of the civil society organizations in procurement and contract monitoring
- Establish an e-Procurement system
- Enhance efficiency in procurement and contract management
- Ensure participation of the private sector
- Harmonize the federal and subnational procurement systems
To implement the MAPS recommendations, the Public Procurement and Property Authority (PPPA) in collaboration with the World Bank prepared procurement reform strategy document and action plan in 2021. The strategy document and action plan identified priority actions, estimated cost, implementation arrangement etc.
In the following year (2022), the World Bank provided financial and technical support to implement some of the priority actions through Procurement System Strengthening Project which is currently under implementation.
In addition, PPPA revised the draft procurement proclamation accommodating most of the recommendation provided in the MAPS report on the legal framework which is now under review and approval process within the federal government structure.
The World Bank in collaboration with PPPA is undertaking procurement system and performance assessment in the Road and water sectors using the supplementary module released for pilot testing. This assessment will enable to deep dive for further reform on some of the challenges hampering procurement performance in the key sectors of the economy. Other reforms including rollout of electronic government procurement system and professionalization training are also progressing very well.
Lessons learned
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Close collaboration: Despite the huge volume of work covering federal and subnational procurement systems and the impact of the COVID 19 restriction, the assessment was completed within the planned time frame, which was possible thanks to the close collaboration between the assessment team and the GoE. Find appropriate time to do the MAPS assessment: It is very important that the assessment is carried out at the time when the government have concrete plans for improving the procurement system. In the Ethiopian case, the government prepared a draft to revise the existing legislation, which was put on hold waiting for input from the assessment. The report provided by the assessment team informed the final drafting of the revision to the legislation. As a result, many of the recommendations on the legal framework has been considered in the draft legislation. Emergency procurement procedure: The twin shocks that hit Ethiopia during the assessment (COVID 19 and Desert Locust) motivated the team to assess the capacity of the procurement system in responding to such emergency situations. This has provided additional opportunity to recommend improvement to the procurement system even beyond the indicators provided in the MAPS methodology. Adopting to country context: The team recognized that some of unique features of the procurement system associated with the federal structure require a somewhat different approach to applying MAPS than in non-federal countries. It’s important to factor this in when planning the assessment.
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“The evidence-based MAPS recommendations and the subsequent works done in preparing action plan incontestably clarified “what we should do and when”. This is essential to achieve expected result from our reform works”
Director General, Public Procurement and Property Authority