Public Procurement and Asset Management Reform Implementation in Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia

Abstract

Because of the traditional and non-strategic outlook of the procurement and property administration system, inefficiency and ineffectiveness in the operation, the Government of Ethiopia has launched a comprehensive public procurement and asset management reform in 2003 in order to achieve value for money and to develop best procurement and property administration systems and practices in the country. Besides, Oromia regional state in its part has adapted the reform initiated at the federal level and been implementing it since then. However public procurement and asset management reform has been implementing in the region, success in achieving the desired objectives of the reform has seen more constraint. Then, the purpose of this study was to assess the status (challenges and prospects) of public procurement and asset management reform being implementing in Oromia regional state. The study was conducted around the five pillars of the reform. The pillars are (1) legal and regulatory frameworks; (2) institutional and structural frameworks; (3) professional competence; (4) public procurement and property administration systems, tools and procedures; and (5) government – private sector partnership. A mixed research design was adopted because it provided flexibility and afforded the researcher the opportunity to deal with both quantitative and qualitative data in order to reach on the depth understanding of the reform status in the region. Out datedness of existing procurement and property administration legal frameworks and supplementary documents, inadequateness of the existing institutional and structural setup, inadequate competence levels of employees charged with the responsibility of procurement and property administration, challenges of strategic procurement and property management planning, poor use of new electronic communications and transaction processing technologies, poor record keeping, inadequate internal control and monitoring, poor centralized reporting and strategic government – private sector/stakeholder partnership were identified as the major problems hampering achievement of there form objectives. Thus, the study concluded that, the public procurement and asset management reform being implementing in the region has yet not successfully attained its intended objectives because of the deficiencies identified in the study and so more efforts should be exerted.