The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Parliament has stated that the University of Rwanda (UR) should not exclude Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) or start-ups from participating in public procurement opportunities. The PAC emphasised that requiring them to have prior experience as a condition for bidding for tenders worth less than Rwf100 million is not appropriate. This, members of PAC held, is in violation of the procurement legislation which provides that tenders with less than Rwf100 million in value are not subject to experience requirement. It made the warning on Wednesday, September 20, during hearings on public finance and asset management issues exposed by the Auditor General’s report for the financial year ended June 30, 2022. ALSO READ: Private sector seeks review of public procurement laws MP Jean-Claude Ntezimana said most of the resources management issues in UR concern procurement, idle assets, and filling the books of accounts. Concerning procurement, he said, the audit showed that in the financial year 2021/2022, UR planned for 38 tenders – worth more than Rwf8.8 billion – but 23 of them, equivalent to 60 per cent of the total – were awarded without compliance with the legislation. These include requiring experience for SMEs for bidding. MP Jeanne d’Arc Uwimanimpaye said the three tenders where UR made unfair requests for experience from exempted companies are the supply of fire extinguishers, purchase of mattresses for UR campus, and purchase of branded and promotional materials for UR. “I think there was a bad intention behind requiring experience for the purchase of mattresses (worth Rwf40 million), fire extinguishers, and promotional materials for UR. If you opened up the tenders [to allow greater competition], you could save a lot of money,” she said, pointing out that many traders sell mattresses. Valens Muhakwa, the PAC Chairperson, has stated that public entities should not demand experience from SMEs for tenders valued at less than Rwf100 million. He observed that because of the experience requirement, one of the tenders in question only got one bidder. “This is a law. You must comply with it,” Muhakwa said. The Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Finance at UR, Françoise Kayitare Tengera, said the university management observed that problem and realised that they would not require experience on the tenders in question, going forward. “We often do that because of our particularity to be a large institution because the successful bidder must serve 11 campuses. “But, now we have implemented the Auditor General's recommendation, we are no longer requiring experience because it is in line with trying to support the growth of local companies,” she said. The Ag Division Manager for Research, Capacity Development, and Monitoring at Rwanda Public Procurement Authority (RPPA), Celestin Sibomana, said that by requirement exemption, the procurement law aims to support the growth of start-ups and SMEs. He observed that the emphasis should be put on contract management to ensure that the supply or contractor honours its terms and conditions.
