Effective implementation of Agpo could be boosted by new legislation

To enable youth, women and persons living with disability to participate in government opportunities including tenders, the State has done its best to implement the Access to Government Procurement Opportunities (Agpo) programme that was launched by President Uhuru Kenyatta in October 2013, but the main bottleneck is lack of a body mandated to oversee the policy.

The Agpo programme founded on article 227 of the Constitution aims at fair, equitable, transparent and cost-effective procurement of goods and services to citizenry.

Today, compliance status to the provisions of Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act (PPADA), 2015 is wanting with regard to 30 per cent preferences and reservations scheme as revealed by the number of disadvantaged groups that have benefitted since the implementation of the Act.

In response to my question before the National Assembly Committee on Finance and National Planning, the National Treasury reveals that the average reservation percentage by all entities has been decreasing from 22.99, 18.17 and 17.35 respectively from 2016 to 2018.

Target groups

The report shows that since the enactment of the Act in 2016, procuring entities that reported awarded a total of 67,690 contracts to the target groups. The women category received the highest number of contracts at 34,335, followed by the youth at 29, 170 and people with disabilities the least at 4,066. Over the period, the aggregate value of the contracts was Sh56,394,900,800.86.

This is much away from the target 30 per cent and amounts to intimidation of the special groups by organisations that favour the well-off traders. The marginalised groups still have no impartial platform to hustle for their survival in this self-interested society.

For this reason, I have drafted a bill known as the Preference and Reservations Procurement Bill, 2018 that majorly proposes establishment of a statutory body to be named Access to Preference and Reservation Authority (APRA).

The body will be mandated to certify the disadvantaged groups, carry out training and capacity building, provide technical assistance to procuring entities in implementation of the preference and reservation categories and to develop policy guidelines.

The National Treasury that is mandated by the Act to monitor and evaluate its implementation, lacks muscles and portfolio to compel all procuring entities to observe this vital policy aiming to give a chance to the underprivileged groups.

The body will also investigate and act on procurement complaints relating to issues under the mandate of the authority. Section 17 of the Public Procurement and Assets Disposal act 2015, mandates a secretariat at the National Treasury to look into the above functions.

Board members

In my proposal that has gone before the National Assembly Budget and Finance Committee three times, the board of the APRA shall comprise a chairperson nominated by the Cabinet Secretary and appointed by the President, and other nine members representing relevant interests. The chief executive officer will be the secretary to the board and the tenure of the board members shall be three years’ renewable once.

For access and eligibility to the reservation and preference scheme, the bill proposes that enterprises owned by youth, women and persons living with disabilities shall have 70 per cent being these special people ownership and leadership goes to people under these categories.

This will address the rampant habit where traders fake documents and register their companies in the names of youth, women and persons living with disability so as to get reserved opportunities they do not deserve.

South Korea, for instance, has a functional procurement system that has increased participation of small and micro enterprises in government contracts. The government gives preferential finance assistance in all forms throughout the procurement cycle including advance payment to SMEs.

As a representative of a special group in the country, I will not relent in looking for all possibilities to rescue this group from continued poverty due to unfavourable policies.

- The writer is a Nominated MP for Youth