BINDURA UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE EDUCATION

FACULTY OF COMMERCE
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

NAME MOLLYN S CHAMWAURA

REG NO B193392B
PROGRAMME PURCHASING AND SUPPLY
YEAR 4-1
COURSE LEGAL ASPECTS IN PURCHASING AND SUPPLY (PAS401)
LECTURER DR MAWONDE
ASIGNMENT 1
Question
Using a procurement entity of your choice in Zimbabwe, explore and explain any 5 contractual
challenges that are faced by the procuring entity in carrying out procurement activities and
suggest solutions for the identified challenges (50)
Government procurement or public procurement

A government spends, on average 10% of its GDP on the procurement of goods and services. In
developing countries this rises to 12-20 %, and in post-conflict countries such as Sierra Leone
the figure reaches 70% (OECD, 2005). Strengthening a nation’s procurement capacities has the
potential to bring about significant benefits. Conversely, failure to do so can severely impact a
nation’s welfare and prospects for growth. Public funds are collected through taxes and must be
spent in a transparent and accountable manner (Hui et al. 2011). As a result, procurement
managers face a variety of challenges and difficulties on the job. In addition, identifying and
addressing procurement challenges pays off in the long run. Several factors directly influence an
organization’s bottom line, including the quality of its procurement. Depending on an
organization’s size and line of business, procurement challenges may vary. Therefore, the writer
seeks to address procurement challenges and come up with positive solution to procurement
challenges that haunt Ministry of Health and Child Care-PMU’s as a private entity.

FAIRNESS, INTEGRITY AND TRANSPARENCY, THROUGH COMPETITION

The core of procurement at the Secretariat is fair competition that is done openly and honestly.
Competition must be conducted on the basis of suitable and transparent norms, rules, and
procedures that are applied uniformly to all prospective suppliers in order to prevent collusion.
All interested stakeholders, both inside and outside the organization, should be able to trust that
the procurement process has been conducted fairly. A transparent system has unambiguous rules
and checks & balances to guarantee that they are followed. Records are open, as appropriate, to
inspection by auditors; unsuccessful suppliers can be briefed on the strengths and weaknesses of
their own offers. Transparency ensures that any deviations from fair and equal treatment are
detected very early, and makes such deviations less likely to occur. It thus protects the integrity
of the process and the interest of the Secretariat. You can conduct audits successfully thanks to
technology. An audit will increase transparency throughout the entire process and provide you a
full picture. By doing this, you can make sure that your money isn't wasted and is going toward
useful and necessary purchases. With the use of technology, you can measure your KPIs more
successfully and efficiently.
Appreciation of the Act
In terms of the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets PPDPA ACT (2018) Chapter
22:23) Section 4 (a) to (e) the objective of this Act is, “ to ensure that procurement is effected
in a manner that is transparent, fair, honest, cost-effective and competitive; and (b) to promote
competition among bidders; and (c) to provide for the fair and equitable treatment of all bidders,
leading to procurement contracts that represent good value for money; and (d) to promote the
integrity of, and fairness and public confidence in, procurement processes; and (e) to secure the
implementation of any environmental, social, economic and other policy that is authorized or
required by any law to be taken into account by a procuring entity in procurement proceedings.”
In addition, Section 26 of the PPDPA ACT Chapter 22:23 Market consultation is a crucial,
essential procurement policy that guarantees that all PMU organizations use of the information
or advice does not distort competition and does not infringe the principles of non-discrimination
and transparency; and (b) without limiting paragraph (a), where the information or advice was
supplied by a bidder, shall communicate the information or advice to all other bidders.

POOR GOVERNMENT SUPPORT

Strategies to maintain supply chain of medical supplies need to be part of the Zimbabwean
response to the COVID-19 crises as it bothers on the sustainability of essential health services.
Many health facilities lack basic medical supplies which include essential medicines and
consumables. The pandemic has further exposed the vulnerability and the consequences of the
largely untapped utilization of the production capacity of many African countries as there is huge
dependence and reliability on the importation of these supplies as well as their raw materials.
Zimbabwean healthcare system has the potential to be self-reliant and sustainable and therefore it
will be highly beneficial for the government to embark on strengthening of its regulatory
systems, improve business environment through favorable policies and integrate research and
development with the market demands in response to such crises- local vaccine production
should be a priority at this moment, advise is for the government to equip local universities with
supplies and knowledge that help them to be able to produce PPE, sanitizers and state of the art
storage facilities that will enable vaccines to be transported across the country, hustle free. There
is also need for partnerships with relevant bodies both internationally and indigenously in order
to foster investments, trade facilitation, business development and industrialization.

SUPPLIER RELATED ISSUES

The management of suppliers is one of the biggest difficulties in procurement. The entire process
is complicated, from choosing the best vendor to monitoring vendor performance and
guaranteeing a consistent supply of high-quality goods. Particularly in light of the COVID-19
epidemic, untimely payments, the deferral of business to other suppliers, and suppliers that are
unable to meet administrative requirements result in a lack of a reliable supplier base. The
supplier base of organizations is growing as a result of a variety of causes, including increasingly
globalized business processes that give access to worldwide suppliers, growing supply chain
complexity, expanding organizational scale, etc. The management of suppliers' full lifecycles has
become more important as the number of suppliers working with companies has increased.

LACK OF TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION

Although manual handling of procurement may initially seem straightforward, as it becomes

more complicated, it can become a barrier to success. The difficulty for the procurement
department is to view technology as a helping hand and a partner who adds value to a business. It
is essential to have knowledge of how digital procurement may save costs and boost innovation
if future objectives are to be met. Contrariwise, the benefits of utilizing technology in public
procurement are as follows:

1. Improves efficiency and speed

Technology substantially improves the speed and efficiency of the buying process, saving time.
Instead of hiring someone to complete important duties, technology can handle them. As a result,
your procurement staff will have less work to do and more time to handle the procurement
process' most challenging duties. This also helps to improve efficiency in Parirenyatwa Group of
Hospitals operations and increase productivity too.

2. Decreases the average cycle time

In a manual procurement process, contract drafting and revision take up the majority of the time
for procurement officers and their support staff. But thanks to technology, they can use internal
order templates from the Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals as well as online purchasing
approvals. They may establish contracts that are appropriate for your business and make any
minor revisions that are necessary. Instead of creating a new contract every time, they can use
technology to store older ones and reuse them as needed.

3. Eliminates manual document storing system

A manual procurement process often leads to a lot of paperwork and those papers eventually pile
up. It can be difficult for your procurement team to search for and track a single expense
document. Also, it’s not easy to organize and store these papers. That’s why it’s important that
you leverage technology and completely eliminate your paper-based storing system.When you
use a paperless information and data storing system, it will help procurement team in many
ways. For instance, it will become much easier for you to organize, access, and track your
documents whenever you want.

4. Increases data accuracy

Most stakeholders concur that manual data entry and an inefficient procurement process are the
top workflow process challenges.. It leads to incorrect data entry. It could therefore raise the
likelihood of procurement process problems. However, automation can be used to solve this
problem. You can streamline the data process via automation. As a result, you will notice fewer
errors and a considerable improvement in data accuracy. It aids in keeping all of your
information and paperwork organized so that you can quickly and simply track the contract of
any vendor. You may develop a more transparent procurement system with the aid of
technology.
 However, there are quite a number of effective solutions to curb these procurement problems.
These include Government and NGO support, good customer relationship management, modern
infrastructure development, prompt payments, use SAP and develop an Agile Supply Chain
Management System.
Customer Satisfaction
The researcher recommends that MOHCC should improve on employee training & development
so as to increase customer satisfaction. A customer must be viewed as a king of production since
he or she’s the one who possesses finance. Having information on consumer behaviours and
market trends can help chain partners to satisfy customer needs and to manage inventory
information efficiently (Lee and Kleiner, 2001). Customers will return the product if it does not
meet their requirements (Stuart et al, 2005). Customer care should array from considering
customer problems or complaints and use six procurement rights to deliver the right quality of
goods, right quantity, in the right conditions to the right customer at the right time, right cost and
right place. All complaints by customers should be taken into consideration and suitable
corrective actions are taken by the management.

AGILE SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

The global health supply chain program in Zimbabwe has recommended enhancing data
availability through real time data transmission from distance outposts to improve turnaround
times as well as negotiating longer contract terms with various suppliers. With the second wave
of COVID-19 in Zimbabwe, stricter and vigorous port of entry inspections are the order of the
day with some goods being held in bonded warehouses until they satisfy port guidelines. Finding
ways which enable major pharmaceutical distributors to deliberately let go of conventional
shipping of medical supplies through the Indian Ocean and consider air cargo may be ideal for
essential goods. For instance, NATPHARM or PGH has to adopt this effective Agile Supply
Chain strategy that is more flexible, receptive, customer responsive and industrial responsive to
global changes.

FRAMEWORK AGREEMENTS

The disruption of the medical supply chain is a great opportunity for Zimbabwe to be less
dependent on foreign medical supplies. MOHCC needs to come up with import substitution
measures to strengthen the nation’s capabilities of producing medical supplies through
organizations like VARICHEM, CAPS, NATPHARM AND AVAILPHARM pharmaceutical
which for years have yearned for government support and public private partnerships. The
country can get the best deals through a meticulous negotiation of lower prices for essential
medical goods required at the front line, providing diminishing profits and priority for
importation with both foreign and private companies. Another, recommendation is for local
medical supplies importers to apply for tax holidays and the deferment of VAT, Value Added
Tax on essential supplies being used during the COVID-19 period.
This may help the smooth the supply chain of these goods and tax payment negotiations with the
ZRA, Zimbabwe Revenue Authority may be done later after the goods have reached the end
users efficiently and promptly. The recent launch of the AMSP, Africa Medical Supplies
Platform brings hope for Zimbabwe. The platform reveals immediate access to an African and
global base of examined manufacturers and procurement strategic partners, and ensures African
Union member states purchase certified medical equipment. This platform, coupled with the
ACFTA, has the potential to reduce the cost of reagents. The initiative will also help in building
partnerships that will optimize supply, logistics and accelerate the regulatory approval pathway.
With these partnerships, joint demand management is also possible and product and supplier
shortlists that improve the supply chain process are generated.

TRANSPARENCY

MOHCC needs to address issues of corruption in the tendering and procurement process of
medical supplies. In the context of the COVID-19 supply chain, PRAZ, CSOs, Civil Society
Organisations and the ZACC, Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission may play a vital role in
demanding and ensuring transparency and good governance of public financial resources.
Development partners should also ensure that CSOs managing their donations adopt means to
track, monitor and shadow report on anomalies that emerge in resource and commodity
utilization. Procurement of health and non-health commodities must be effected in the manner
that is transparent, cost-efficient, timeously, fair, honest and effective for overall business
success. Clearly, many of the key principles of governance have become common parlance in
shaping international public procurement policy. Moves to enhance transparency and
accountability have brought about increased engagement with key stakeholders across most
public administrations, allowing both industry and society increased involvement in the policy-
making process. With respect to public procurement this includes procurement officials, clients,
the business community, donor agencies, monitoring bodies, parliaments, the media, civil society
and others (OECD, 2005).

CONCLUSION
In order to improve service delivery, all PMU entities should incorporate the framework for risk-
based due diligence, the value for money approach to public procurement activities, and sound
corporate governance principles.
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