Improve SPB’s operating rules to enhance efficiency

Investment Promotion this week, it appears that one of these less-than-perfect decisions centres on the renovation of lifts in the high-rise Government complexes of Kaguvi and Mukwati.
Ministers based in these 21-storey towers are having to climb long flights of stairs to their offices and, quite understandably, are objecting at every opportunity, including Cabinet meetings.
The tender to get lifts working again has not been implemented, in fact work appears not to have started, despite pre-payments and other assistance to the winning company.
The Minister, in his evidence before the Parliamentary committee, might have been a little unfair.
Yes some winners of tenders do not perform as they should, but since the State actually functions most of the time most obviously do.
The SPB is clearly needed. The Government needs to buy goods and services and without very tight controls no one would trust that the process was free of corruption.
We need to remember that Minister Biti was attacking the board over what he saw as a wrong decision to award a tender to a company that he reckoned could not do the work; there was no hint in his attack that the board had not been totally honest.
Anyone in the private sector who does procurement knows that it is difficult to avoid all dud orders. No matter how much work is done in choosing a supplier, and this includes checks on stated capacity, sometimes the wrong person gets the job.
It is all very well to say only those with proven experience should be given the work; the problem then arises that only one or two companies may qualify and they can push prices up.
Sometimes a newcomer is prepared to bring the profit margin down in order to get experience needed for future work, and often this does work out. He can do the job competently for a lower price.
But equally clearly this sort of decision is wrong. Private companies faced with this mistake simply scrap their decision and go for someone better. Government rules make that harder for the SPB.
Perhaps the rules need to be changed, so that the SPB can have sharper teeth when it comes to enforcement.
In the lift case it might well have been better to have dumped the tender winner when that company came round whining for a deposit and wanted to borrow scaffolding and had a good look at the number two on the final shortlist to see if they could do something better.
Interestingly, it seems to be Minister Biti’s office which would have the most say in changing SPB rules.
The other problem the SPB faces is when a Government ministry or a State company changes its mind. We have seen this with some Zesa tenders.
The State unit puts out a requirement, the SPB goes through the lengthy process of finding a supplier that can deliver and can deliver at the lowest cost, only to be told that what the unit asked for is not what it actually wants.
Clarity in stating requirements is just as important as the SPB’s own processes.
A good system might need the tweak of having a tender put out seeking solutions to a particular need, without specifying the sort of hardware and software that might be eventually used. This would allow suppliers to show imagination in finding the best solution.
Awarding Government tenders is always going to be a complex bureaucratic process. The SPB is spending taxpayers’ money and taxpayers are a nasty suspicious crowd. So every “i” has to be dotted and every “t” crossed. Friendship with important people has to be eliminated, and seen to be eliminated, as a factor.
On the other hand decisions have to be made. The SPB operates under a complex set of rules that are not just designed to produce the most efficient solution at the lowest cost.
Consideration has to be given to whether a company is Zimbabwean or foreign owned,   openings are supposed to be created for newcomers. There are good reasons for these social              factors, but they will create their fare share of duds.
If Minister Biti and his colleagues, and if they are supported by Parliament, want changes made in the SPB processes then they need to discuss these.
They must keep that public trust that the SPB does not award contracts to their friends, but they and the SPB, with help from the Auditor General, might well want to see how efficiencies can be boosted and compliance enhanced in light of these odd dud contracts.
For a start, the cost of some of the social requirements needs to be calculated precisely.
The SPB does generally work well. But every organisation can be improved and clearly some improvement is needed in enforcing compliance and changing successful tenderers when it is clear that a winner does not really know what it is doing.