Dr Margaret Satya Rose’s analysis of the Office of Procurement Regulation’s recent communiqué correctly highlights the legal and governance importance of robust annual procurement planning.
The Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property Act, 2015 (as amended) clearly anchors the publication of planned procurement activities to the approval of the national budget, and the OPR’s own guidelines have long treated the Annual Procurement Plan (APP) as a mandatory internal control tool, with the Annual Schedule of Planned Procurement Activities (ASPPA) as its public-facing output. In that sense, her concern that the communiqué appears to downgrade the APP’s status has merit.
At the same time, it is worth recognising the practical realities facing public bodies in the current fiscal year. The country has undergone a change of government mid year, with new ministers, reconfigured portfolios and evolving policy priorities. In such circumstances, many entities are having to revisit strategic objectives, realign programmes and in some cases reorganise internal structures. Requiring full, mature APPs on the original timetable, without any flexibility, risks driving purely formalistic compliance or blanket non compliance, rather than the thoughtful, risk-based planning the Act envisages.
The OPR’s decision to emphasise timely publication of the ASPPA can therefore be read, not as an abandonment of planning, but as a pragmatic effort to preserve at least one core safeguard: public visibility of intended procurement for the year.
By insisting that entities prioritise a complete schedule of planned procurement activities, the Regulator helps ensure transparency and predictability for suppliers and citizens, even where internal planning is still catching up with new ministerial directions. In a transition year, that minimum standard may prevent ad hoc purchasing and opaque last-minute contracting, while giving entities breathing room to rebuild comprehensive APPs that genuinely reflect their revised mandates.
This does not mean that the APP has become optional, nor that general guidelines can be quietly set aside. The APP remains the instrument that integrates demand forecasting, category strategies, risk management and budget alignment The OPR’s own planning templates make clear that an ASPPA derived from a weak or non-existent APP cannot deliver value for money or resilience. But the better reading of the communiqué may be that, in a year of unusual institutional disruption, the regulator is sequencing expectations: first, secure the transparency floor through ASPPAs; then, support entities to restore the full planning architecture as new policies and structures stabilise.
In that light, The JCC takes the view, that the way forward is not to choose between Dr Rose’s emphasis on legal and ethical rigour and the OPR’s apparent pragmatism, but to insist on both. Public bodies should treat the current communication as temporary flexibility around timing and emphasis, not as a signal that serious procurement planning is dispensable.
The ultimate test will be whether, 12 to 18 months from now, entities can demonstrate that they have moved beyond schedules alone to the kind of robust APPs that the Act, the guidelines and good governance all require.
