Factors Affecting the Effective Functioning of Public Procurement in Public Universities of Ethiopia

Abstract

Ethiopian Universities are fully dependent on government’s budget and procurement budget comes from tax payers. However, there is misappropriation of procurement budgets. Recently, procurement budget deficit has been observed in Public Universities of Ethiopia and 10 to 100 million Ethiopian birr have been wasted through non-transparent procurement systems. Employees also have been complaining about the quality of goods and services in every meetings held. Delays, poor qualified products and services, over pricing compared to the actual market price are the basic problems observed in procurement functions. Hence, this study aimed at identification of the basic factors that affect the proper functioning of public procurement practice in Public Universities. Analysis was made based on 351 selected respondents from 9 of the public Universities. Those employees who have direct relationship with public procurement were selected from top, middle and lower levels. Specifically, procurement workers, procurement and audit committee and internal auditors were participated. Multiple regression was employed and data was run by SPSS version 20. Tables were used for ease of interpretation. The regression results revealed that, public procurement policy, legal environment, organizational structure, employee ethics, ICT and management of suppliers have positive significant effect on the effective functioning of public procurement practice. However, budgetary allocation has insignificant and negative effect on the effective functioning of public procurement practice. Amending existing procurement guideline, open discussion with the nearby suppliers, continual ethics training for procurement workers and installing ICT platforms were found to be the possible recommendations.