Procurement Practices and its Problems in Telecom Sector: The Case of Northeast Region – Ethiopia.

Abstract

Procurement is a means by which an organization acquires goods, works & services based on law. In Ethiopia, the monopoly of telecom services rendered by Ethio telecommunication as a Government owned enterprises. More than two third of Ethio telecom northeast region’s annual budget is spent to procurement. The negligence of the procurement unit has a direct impact on the performance of all departments in terms of additional costs. This paper is to identify the Perception of employees and Problems (Performance) of Procurement practices in the Ethio telecom. The research takes a form of explanatory research and primary data were used to collect data through questionnaires from a sample of 133 employees of the organization, interviews from procurement department head, focus group discussion from purchasing committee and the secondary data were collected from the organization’s procurement department documents. The data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics. The major finding indicates that, the performance of the procurement department is low in terms of procurement of the right quality, time & source due to long work flow process flow of the new revised Works Procurement Policies and Procedures (WPPP), bureaucratic nature, lack of delegation, problem of planning in supplier’s selection. Hence, the management of ethio telecom should give adequate emphasis on effective implementation of the Procurement manual, follow procurement principles, attention to user’s complaints, prearranged mechanism to manage purchase documents and strong relationships with competent suppliers are desirable to uplift the telecommunications into a profitable service.