President’s concerns about referring trivial matters to Cabinet for approval

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, in his address to the Nation on the Independence Day, said that the government officers were in the habit of seeking Cabinet approval for even trivial matters that could be decided by the officials themselves within their authority and that they were hesitant to take any decisions unless circulars were available to guide them. He further said that under such a situation, the country could not move forward and that he was planning to introduce legislature to make the administrative system more efficient.

In this respect, the writer sent a letter to the editor in The Island of 08.06.2016, posing the question “Should the Cabinet get involved in awarding of contracts?”, which may be accessed via the link: http://archive.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=146531.

This was written because if one peruses the list of weekly Cabinet decisions, almost 50% are on the award of contracts for constructing buildings for government departments, other public sector institutes and universities, and also for purchasing spare parts for power plants, medicine for hospitals, and similar essential items which in any case need to be purchased.

If it is a case of getting financial clearance, the matter should be first referred to the Treasury, and once approval is granted, there is no need for a Cabinet nod. Such a procedure only opens the matter for corruption. Every such item to be tabled at the Cabinet, the line Minister has to submit a memorandum seeking approval for the matter, be it a contract or procurement of equipment, etc.

A Minister’s signature has a value, and more often than not, a Minister may want some consideration from the awardee for putting his signature on a memorandum. A contractor will not hesitate to consider such a request favourably, because without his signature he will not get the contract which sometimes could run into hundreds of millions if not billions of rupees. This is an open secret. There are also others down the line who could benefit from such contracts.

Under the present system, the recommendation of any high-value purchase of goods or services is referred to the Cabinet Appointed Negotiating Committee (CANC) prior to being submitted to the Cabinet. The National Procurement Commission (NPC) was established under the 19th Amendment to the Constitution to handle all matters pertaining to procurement of goods and services in the public sector. In the aforesaid letter, the writer recommended that once the CANC cleared the tender, it should be referred to the NPC for final approval and award the tender without Cabinet approval being sought. It was also pointed out that if there were any regulations currently in existence that require tenders of high-value should receive approval of the Cabinet of Ministers, such regulations needed to be amended to make the NPC the final tender approving authority. The officials will then not hesitate to settle the matter without wasting Cabinet time on such routine matters as highlighted by the President in his address to the Nation.

Dr Janaka Ratnasiri

Nawala TT