Two public universities are vying to evaluate the efficiency of the government's procurement process for large volume buying.

The Addis Abeba Civil Service University and Bahir Dar University are the two educational institutions that reached the financial evaluation level for the restrictive bid. The bid was announced by the Federal Procurement & Property Administration Agency to evaluate the efficiency of the nine-year-old framework procurement.

The Public Procurement & Property Disposal Service facilitates annual framework procurements that are valued at two billion Birr on average, involving 321 different commonly used items supplied by 49 vendors.

Printer toner, stationery materials, sanitary products, uniform, and tires are among the items procured by the Service to be distributed to all governmental institutions and branch offices. The procurement is made for three years at a time.

Roughly 70pc of the government's annual budget is devoted to the procurement of different items.

Three universities and two consulting firms were invited to submit bids in March to study and evaluate the framework agreement, to report any gaps discovered and to make recommendations for improvements. Addis Abeba University, the Ethiopian Management Institute and the Industrial Projects Service were the three other participants alongside the two universities.

However, only the two universities submitted proposals that fulfilled the Agency’s technical requirement for assessment methods to be applied to accomplish the work, developing profile of the human power needed, the content of the report and finally the financial offer they proposed.

The winner of the bid will be selected on the basis of how closely it meets the requirements of the tender to the satisfaction of the client; addresses the communication gaps between the user, supplier and the Service; and the overall achievement of the framework procurement, according to Martha Luwiji, director of the Agency.

"The task of the project is expected to show the gaps and come up with solutions and recommendations within the last quarter of the budget year,” said Martha.

The proposal preparation committee for Ethiopian Civil Service University is led by the team leader, Tadiwos Menta (PhD), who said the framework procurement has a good side in terms of efficiency, as it reduces the interventions and transactions of people in the process, thus reducing opportunities for corruption.