Procurement Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (PRAZ) CEO Nyasha Chizu has told journalists in Harare today that the private sector is not organized for criteria to sector’s procurement principals.
The CEO was presenting on PRAZ’ function and role in the economy during a meeting with the media.
“Our challenge is when we put the evaluation criteria, the requirement is the evaluation criteria must be smart, it must be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timebound,” Chizu said.
“So the problem that we have at the moment is our private sector is not organized.”
The PRAZ CEO, who was also answering a question on the role of the authority on Small and Medium Enterprises also called upon the private players to be organized to apply the relevant criteria.
“You (private sector) are not organized to the extent that I can have criteria to distinguish a woman’s business from a general business,” Chizu said. (sic)
“I can have criteria to distinguish an indigenous company from a foreign company. I can have that criterion of distinguishing who is the manager.” (sic)
PRAZ has an objective of ensuring that procurement in Zimbabwe is effected in a manner that is transparent, fair, honest, cost-effective and competitive.
Although PRAZ has managed to create procurement standards for the public sector, government departments and institutions have not been able to set up Procurement Management Units (PMO) within systems as required by the authority.
PMOs, which are supposed to be units within the institutions are meant to procure on behalf of the departments.
On a total of 294 government institutions, only 85 PMU registrations were approved by PRAZ, 35 are under review and 174 had not submitted the units.
