Trade Ministry adopts electronic system to ease procurement of goods and services 

Ministry of Trade, Industry and Cooperatives on Wednesday launched a scheme dubbed Electronic Government Procurement, (e-GP) as an avenue through which buying and selling of government property will be effected in the Ministry.

It aims to improve transparency and competitiveness as well as save public funds when goods and services are purchased by the Government.

It also makes public procurement more strategic and serves as an effective innovation tool to institute procurement reforms with greater performance in terms of efficiency, transparency, competition, fairness and value for money.

It provides a wealth of information to decision makers, the private sector and citizens alike, on the performance of public procurement.

In 2021, the scheme was rolled out in several entities like National Social Security Fund (NSSF), Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), National Information Technology Authority Uganda (NITA-U), Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and the Institute of Information and Technology.

Trade Ministry Permanent Secretary Geraldine Ssali says this arrangement will boost their efforts to procure and sell government property due to the fact that available products or items will be listed online through the use of modern technology.

She adds that this kind of establishment will ease individual efforts, to seek consent from government on whether or not to supply equipment to the Trade ministry.

She cast distrust on the previous modalities by government to procure equipment, and said it involved a lot of nepotism, fraud, intrigue, denying the most qualified companies and individuals an opportunity to supply viable products to the government.

“If we are to purchase equipment, for example vehicles, aimed at servicing government programmes like Emyoga, a Ugandan supplier can do it better, which also reduces the costs because we can locate these people locally, and this greatly benefits a common man, hence saving more money for other purposes,” said Ms Ssali.

In August 2021 E-GP was established by the The Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority (PPDA) to promote electronic procurement within government entities, departments, ministries.

Electronic procurement systems have been adopted by most countries around the world, with some being in place for more than 30 years.