The South Sudan Public Procurement and Disposal of Assets Authority (PPDAA) says its board members are currently visiting their counterparts in the East African Community (EAC) to benchmark on their procurement systems.

Speaking during a visit to the PPDA Offices in Kampala yesterday, Mr Deng Akuei Kak, the executive director PPDA, said they seek to understand the procurement systems used by their peers before they can join the East African Public Procurement system.

“We have come here to meet our counterparts. We came as a board because we are joining the East African Public Procurement System. Uganda has offered us the experience they have so that the delegation gets to know the procurement system in East Africa based on South African law,” he said.

Mr Deng explained that when the East African Community member states made the laws, South Sudan was not part of the process but now they have come here to complete the process, study the documents and see how the systems run before they can establish their own.

According to Mr Benson Turamye,  the executive director of Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority Uganda, they shared with their South Sudan counterparts the procurement reforms that they have implemented since 2003.

“South Sudan got independence in 2011 and they established the PPDA Act in 2018.They do not have regulations and structures but they have established an office equivalent to PPDA Uganda; they have 26 staff running the body,” he said.

Mr Turamye said it is important for them to come and see the journey Uganda has taken for the last 20 years so that they do not have to reinvent the wheel because where Uganda met challenges and shortfalls, they can learn from such mistakes and make them the success stories.

Asked whether this is a journey that South Sudan can achieve within the short term, he said they have to learn from Uganda and put in place functional institutional procurement systems for procurement entities to adopt and accept reforms in public procurement.

He added that the regulatory body in South Sudan has to ensure it becomes firm in terms of compliance, monitoring and evaluation and also automating their systems.

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