ASSESSMENT OF OF PROCUREMENT PLANNING PRACTICE AND ITS IMPLEMENTATION: THE CASE OF UNDP ETHIOPIA COUNTRY OFFICE

Abstract

Efficient management of public procurement function plays significant role in achieving the development Goals of UN Agencies including UNDP. As a result, effective and efficient procurement management is a mandatory requirement to achieve these goals.The Public Procurement Managementcovers procurement planning, budget allocation, bids evaluation, contract award, and contract management. The objective of the study isto assess the practice of procurement planning and its implementation preparation in the Office of UNDP Ethiopia.The study employed descriptive study and purposive sampling method with a total population of 77 staff and the sample size of 45 respondents from all requesting units. The findings showed that the majority of the respondents confirmed that the organization’s practice in relation to procurement planning preparation:early needs identification,specification preparation, price estimation, procurement needs consolidation at office level are not applied in the office.The procurement process undertakes based on individual unit’s request instead of consolidation at office level. Moreover, the study concurred that there is lack of joint efforts and team works in procurement plan preparation between the requesting and procurement units. In relation to the procurement implementation practice, the findings of the study showed that bid were advertised without plan, short notice and re-advertisements undertakes regularly and contract amount variation and modification of the terms of reference & specification occurs. Based on the finding, the following are recommendations. The top management is required to establish effective monitoring and controlling mechanism to ensure that all requesting unit prepares its annual procurement plan at early stage.The Programme and Operations Policies & Procedures of the organization need to be reviewed to put into places of forceful clauses that require for compliance of the requesting and procurement units. In a nutshell, before approving of the results of any procurement process, the top management is advised to ensure that the request is in the approved procurement plan with specific identificationnumber.