Effects of Public Procurement Disposal Act (2005) on Transparency and Accountability on Management of Public Finance: A Case of Public Secondary Schools in Imenti North District

Abstract

Public procurement has a real impact on everyday lives as the creation of both social and economic infrastructure like roads, schools, hospitals and provisions for drinking water and sanitation are but examples of government investment in public sector. The ultimate goal of public procurement is to satisfy the public interest in this sense of good procurement that should satisfy the needs of the people, should be fair to business, should save and avoid wastage of public funds. Therefore this study intention was to establish the effects of Public Procurement Disposal Act (2005) on transparency and accountability on management of public finance: It was guided by the following objectives; to examine the causes of the delay in procurement activities and their effects; to examine the extent to which the Public Procurement and Disposal Act achieves transparency in the use of state resources, to assess the effects of Public Procurement and Disposal Act on expenditure control and to determine the effects of Public Procurement Disposal Act on fairness and competition. This study adopted descriptive research design and the sample was selected using simple random sampling to ensure representativeness. Data was collected from 86 respondents drawn from 43 public secondary schools in Imenti North District in Meru County and this comprised of two members from tendering committee from each school. Imenti North District was selected since it has the highest number of public Secondary schools in Meru County. Data was collected through semi-structured questionnaire. After the collection of data it was analyzed using SPSS and thereafter presented using frequency tables and percentages. The study revealed (67.9%) that procurement activities and procedures were not transparent in that decisions on procurement activities did not follow the rules and regulations of the Act and these decisions were not available and accessible to the public.

Keywords: Accountability Procurement, Financial Management, Transparency, Procurement Planning, Disclosure