Mary Awelana Addah, the Executive Director of the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), has called for urgent reforms to address the increasing use of single sourcing in Ghana’s public sector procurement.
In a recent interview, Madam Addah stressed the need to shift towards more competitive tendering processes.
She expressed concern over the current procurement practices, where a large number of contracts are awarded through single sourcing.
According to Addah, nearly 85 percent of public procurement is done via single sourcing, raising serious concerns about fairness and accountability.
She highlighted that this method is particularly worrying in crucial sectors like education and healthcare, where procurement for school materials, textbooks, and health items often occurs through single sourcing.
“Out of the total procurement window, almost 85 percent of it is done through a single source. And if it is a single source, it means there are a lot of compromises being reached.
“If people are buying school materials, textbooks, and the rest in the education sector, health items, and we are procuring them through single source procurement, while the IMF has recommended that we do a lot more of the competitive tendering, then it means we are compromising on the regime and that affects mostly the private sector.”
The push for reform is part of GII’s larger efforts to fight corruption and make Ghana’s public sector more transparent.
