Public Procurement as a Governance Tool

Public procurement system in Tanzania has gone through various reforms including
legal and institutional since 1992. The enactment of unified public procurement
legislation is the result of recommendations of the consultancy work commissioned
by the government in 1992 which took about 10 years to be implemented as the
enactment of the public procurement legislation (Chapter 10).
Following the World Bank Country Procurement Assessment Report of 1996, a
number of serious flaws in the Tanzanian public procurement system were proposed
for urgent reform. This resulted into the enactment of the Public Procurement Act
2001, which consolidated all procurement legislations for the first time, and required
to push the legal framework towards international standards. Another World Bank
report in 2003, updating that of 1996, came up with a number of more areas for
improvement which required essential reform to address them. Public Procurement
Act No. 3 of 2001 was enacted in 2001 and came into effect on July 2001 after
commissioning of the Public Procurement Regulations. Three years later Act No. 3 of
2001 was repealed and in July 2005 Act No. 21 of 2004 was endorsed and became
operational. Essentially, Act No. 21 of 2004 augmented and reinforced the legislative
and institutional frameworks. On the hand, Act No. 21 of 2004 enabled the
establishment of the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) that replaced
the Central Tender Board.