Justicia Shipena
When procurement plans are delayed or not publicly accessible, it can hinder oversight and lead to inefficiencies in resource allocation.
This is a concern raised in the latest procurement tracker report released on Wednesday by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).
By 30 April 2025, only 42 out of 173 public entities with a procurement function had their 2025/26 annual procurement plans viewable on the e-Procurement Portal. This means just 24% of public entities submitted their plans.
The Public Procurement Amendment Act of 2022 requires public entities to submit their annual procurement plans to the Procurement Policy Unit (PPU) at least three months before the start of the financial year.
Since the government’s financial year ends in March, plans should reach the PPU by the end of December each year.
IPPR found that only five of the 42 plans were submitted on time.
“That means only 3% of public entities complied with the legal deadline,” said IPPR’s research associate Frederico Links.
The PPU, part of the Ministry of Finance and Public Enterprises, is responsible for making annual procurement plans publicly available through the e-Procurement Client System. Despite this, many public entities still fail to meet the requirement.
Links said the lack of timely and accessible procurement plans creates challenges for transparency and accountability in public spending.
Concerns about non-compliance with the Public Procurement Act are not new. Last year, former procurement head Francois Brand highlighted that most government ministries, offices, and agencies (OMAs) were failing to adhere to the Act.
At that time, only the Office of the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Justice were fully compliant, having submitted their annual procurement plans for the 2024/25 financial year. Four months into the new financial year, 68% of public entities had yet to submit their plans to the Procurement Policy Unit (PPU). Out of 33 government offices, ministries, and agencies, only 16 had fulfilled this requirement.
Looking back at the Procurement Policy Unit’s 2020/21 report, 78% of public entities, 135 out of 173, had submitted their annual procurement plans.
