Improving Performance in Public Contracts;The 4th Monitoring Report of Contracts from selected districts in Health & Education

Public procurement which accounts for about 55% of the national budget1 is normally characterized by secrecy, shoddy works, lack of competition, fraud, a supply of poor-quality inputs, cost, and time overruns among others. These problems are underpinned and exacerbated by three factors: a) lack of transparency by public entities,b) low demand for information and accountability by citizens and c) poor responsiveness by public entities to citizens' demand for accountability.

With support from the World Bank, Africa Freedom of Information Centre (AFIC), has been monitoring service contracts in selected districts of Uganda in bid to enhance value for money and compiling reports from the findings therein for the last four years. The reports provide recommendations to the different stakeholders in the procurement processes but most importantly to the procuring entities. So far, AFIC has released three monitoring reports on Education and Health and one on the Agriculture Sector.

This is the fourth monitoring report under the Enhancing Performance and Accountability of Social Service Contracts in the Uganda Project, under the World Bank’s Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA) Program. This project is implemented in collaboration with Transparency International Uganda (TIU) and the Uganda Contracts Monitoring Coalition (UCMC) in the five
selected districts in Uganda namely; Ntungamo, Nebbi, Mubende, Nakaseke, and Mityana. The project’s main focus is on Health, Education, and Agriculture.