Growing perception of corruption and the evidence

– the $28m fast track court ruling, etc..

While the Transparency International corruption index is admittedly derived from public perception and not hard evidence, checks made by The Statesman indicate that there is little evidence to support the opposition claim that corruption is on the increase.

Instead, what our checks show is that there are far more opportunities for detection today than there were a few ago.

Experts identify procurement as one of the areas most prone to corruption. Preventing and controlling corruption in procurement is, therefore, a determining factor in policy and project efficiency. Our study was therefore limited to the Public Procurement Act, which came into effect in 2004, focusing on two contracts from two separate Ministries.

"The government cannot countenance a situation where an official awards over forty billion cedis (¢40b) worth of contract without reference to either the Chief Executive Officer of Ghana Water Company Limited, the Board of Directors or the Minister or the Entity Procurement Law. Let me hasten to add that the exact steps to follow were amply discussed with the Head of PMU as well as the Chief Executive Officer of Ghana Water Company Limited," the Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing stated in a letter date 31 October 2006 to the World Bank's Country Director, Mats Carlson.

The ¢40 billion deal is part of a World Bank-sponsored project to provide potable water for parts of urban Ghana.

Hackman Owusu-Agyemang and other members of his Ministry's Entity Procurement Law had discovered that the award of that contract was "in fragrant breach of the country's young procurement law."

The decision taken, which was reaffirmed Monday, was to "speedily" proceed to re-tender the contract. But, Mr Carlson would have none of it, 'instructing' the Ministry, in a letter dated July 21, to rather "rectify the procedural lapse," at the Tender Review Board, without reopening the tender to at least all thirteen companies who put in the initial bid.

That in the view of the Ministry meant the World Bank was asking it to 'rectify' an illegality after the facts.

But in a no-nonsense reply to the World Bank country director, the Minister said he "expects the World Bank and its officials to help us consolidate our process for transparent procurement to enhance accountability. We are not therefore able to endorse an illegality and the re-tendering will have to proceed. The World Bank certainly is there to assist countries not to dictate to them… I certainly do not intend to legitimise an illegality… We need to proceed to implement this project speedily and the World Bank cannot be seen to be hindering the process by supporting an individual officer's malfeasance as against the principled stand of the management of GWCL, its board and it Minister."

The exchanges centred on differences in opinion over the interpretation of aspects of the Public Procurement Act between the two institutions. The Ministry hopes to re-open the tender this week and get the process completed this month.

But, what it clearly portrays is that there is today, a clear law of reference in the main source of corruption in this country, or elsewhere - public procurement.

While this matter was unfolding, an Accra Fast Track High Court on October 18 ruled that the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports did not follow the right procedure in awarding a contract worth about $28 million to Macmillan Education, UK to supply books to schools.

The Ministry had awarded the company the sole right to supply books to schools throughout the country.

The court ruled that, "there was no transparency in the selection for the contract", saying MOES did not comply with laid down procedures. The court further held there were a number of local publishers which the Ministry could choose from and, therefore, restrained the Ghana Education Trust Fund from releasing money to the company. The Ghana Book Publishers Association filed the suit against the Ministry, the GETFund board and the Public Procurement Board over the $27.9m contract awarded in June 26 2005.

It is generally believed that the risk of corruption is especially high during the evaluation phase of a contracting process, when offers are studied in order to select the contractor.

Nearly three-quarters of 163 countries ranked in the latest Transparency International survey suffer from a perception of serious corruption, while in nearly half it is seen as rampant, a watchdog group reported Monday. TI's 2006 Corruption Perceptions Index gives the worst scores to many of the world’s poorest countries, including almost all African nations, indicating a strong correlation between corruption and poverty.

In the Cato Journal article "Bureaucratic Corruption in Africa: The Futility of Cleanups," Cameroonian economist John Mukum Mbaku writes: "African countries, like many developing countries, have tried several strategies in an effort to minimize levels of bureaucratic corruption.

These include societal, legal, market, and political strategies. All those approaches to corruption cleanup represent the manipulation of outcomes within a given set of rules and presuppose the existence of efficient counteracting institutions.

The evidence shows, however, that most judiciary systems and police forces in the African countries are not properly constrained by the law and that most civil servants (including judges and police officers) are themselves corrupt. As a result, most cleanup programs in Africa have been unsuccessful." Here in Ghana, the perception of corruption may still be understandably high, but what the evidence suggests is that the focus should be on strengthening the integrity of the public procurement process, and enhancing the capacity of anti-corruption institutions, among other measures.