Districts have received their final allocation of road rehabilitation funds, but concerns remain about utilizing them before the fiscal year ends.
PPDA’s Executive Director, Benson Turamye, downplays these concerns, highlighting efforts to streamline procurement processes. Districts now submit procurement plans annually, and bidding thresholds for local contracts have increased to expedite project implementation (from 50 million to 800 million shillings).
Turamye encourages districts to adopt alternative methods like restricted bidding (faster bidding document issuance and receipt) and request for quotation (for projects between 10 million and 400 million shillings) to avoid delays and potential fund reallocation.
The last batch of the district roads roads rehabilitation funds money has finally hit the districts’ accounts, two months to the end of the financial year.
There are worries this period might not see all districts utilize the funds.
“It would have been better if the money came like four months ago,” said Isingoma Patrick, the Hoima municipality legislator and former CAO Hoina district.
However, the PPDA Executive Director, Benson Turamye says there’s “no reason to lament”.
Turamye says the systems and processes have been decentralized to avoid delays in especially works at district level and local government.
Each district or local government is expected to submit their respective procurement plan at the beginning of the year.
The threshold for bids for local contracts have also been lifted to allow faster implementation of projects.
“The threshold was shs50 million and has now been increased to shs800 million,” said Mr. Turamye.
“You only put in papers for open competitive bidding when the project you are going to execute is above shs800 million”.
He rallied districts to make use of processes like restricted bidding as a means to avoid being late and have their funds sent back to the consolidated fund.
“When you use restricted bidding you have less days to issue a bidding document and also receive bids,” said Turamye.
The threshold for request for quotation is between shs10 million to shs400 million and anything within that if they are going to do the road then one can use request for quotation which uses a very short period.
