Tag: Namadi Sambo

The Federal Government has saved about N530 billion from inflated contracts this year, the Director-General, Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), Emeka Eze has said.

Speaking with State House correspondents after a meeting with Vice President Namadi Sambo at the Presidential Villa yesterday, he said the agency through its intervention have been able to increase savings on contracts from N420 billion.

Established by the Public Procurement Act 2007, the agency monitors public procurement, harmonises government policies and practices.

According to Eze, the government is encouraging local production to further reduce costs of projects as the economy is still developing and most of the input for projects are from outside.

He said: “Naturally for this year alone, uptill now we have N420 billion; we added another N110 billion for this year. So, we are talking of about N530 billion saved by our interventions.”

On why projects cost more, he said: “We are a market driven economy where you run a business that will require you to pay interest rate of 21 per cent or 18 per cent, and you are doing the business. Are you going to make your business to recover the cost of money or not?”

“Ordinary common sense will tell you that we are a developing economy and most of the input to our projects are not made in the country. That is why the government is driving on local production. If you are going to use construction equipment, do you make construction equipment in the country? The cost of a car in London, US or where they are made, are they the same?

“The answer is no. Because if you are selling cars, you paid for the car in US and then you add the cost of shipment, clearance, cost of customs before you add your own profit as business men. By the time you add all those costs if you borrowed money, by the time you add all of them, will the cost in America be the same?”

Since most of the projects in 2013 budget are on-going, he said that the agency had no problem with procurement plans.

He said: “First of all the project must be appropriated for, which is already in the budget, in November last year Mr President last year ordered that circulars issued for procurement process for 2013 be started and I have a copy of that circular ordering all the MDA’s to start the procurement process. The intention was that by May everything about 2013 will be concluded and luckily for us this year we don’t have too many new projects, most of them are ongoing projects that don’t require new procurement plan. As far as procurement is concerned we don’t have any issues.”

On why execution of projects sometimes do not meet expectation, he said: “We must continue to tell Nigerians about the need to have character, there is no way one person no matter who he is can do nation building alone. If I send you on a job to say this is what is to be done now and you have a specification and somebody receiving salary has a responsibility to say this is ok and the person does the wrong thing, then there is something wrong with us as a people.”