Copyright namibian
Namibia’s Economy Depends too heavily on government spending of taxpayer funds – so much so that a broken tender system has, for decades, had dire social consequences for most of the population. For this reason, it is welcome that public consultations are taking place aimed at upgrading the state procurement system, such as improving how government institutions use taxpayer money to buy goods and services. The Central Procurement Board of Namibia (CPBN), in charge of tenders since 2015, was an improvement on the cabal of permanent secretaries who colluded to enrich kith and crony. Yet the past 10 years have shown that the CPBN had serious shortcomings and even opened up new corruption temptations. Proposals include establishing a new authority run by an executive director as the enforcer, apparently a move away from a band of part-timers holding sway over who they favour for public bids on a range of goods and services, be it roads construction, buying medicine or restructuring public institutions. Apart from the cumbersome process, the CPBN was exposed over costly blunders, like awarding a N$1.3 billion medicine tender to a five-year-old listed as a majority owner in a company with his father, Cosmas Mukaratirwa, and then relaxing strict financial requirements. The CPBN was also exposed for not confirming whether businessman Shapwa Kanyama’s condom company owned an operational condom or surgical glove factory before awarding him a N$111-million condom tender. But it would be a mistake to only change the law to close the loopholes of the past 10 years rather than improve the overall good governance of public procurement. It would be papering over the cracks of a systematic problem. Ensuring transparency in beneficial ownership is one major step to discourage and catch cheats, whether it is to shut out using a five-year-old as a front or to ensure bidders don’t collude by submitting multiple tenders under disguise. Another is implementing anti-corruption and lifestyle audits, covering all (especially senior) government officials at bureaucratic and political levels, procurement board members and bidders. Anti-corruption audits should demand an automatic assets and relationships declaration. It’s not enough to simply outlaw minors from bidding because it is an obvious case of fronting. It is also not sufficient to block people from the same household submitting multiple contracts for the same job. How would one regulate two brothers who own the same and also separate entities but don’t share a household? The new system should demand that assets and relationships be declared, as well as consent for a random examination of their flow of money and assets. After all, crooked people pay each other using cattle and vehicles as well as setting up offshore channels nowadays. Above all, there must be maximum transparency across the entire public procurement system. That should, of course, be guided by reasonable privacy. But gone should be the days of people enriching themselves at the taxpayer’s expense, and the public getting shoddy services and goods.
