The Achievement of Value for Money in Tanzania Public Procurement: A Non-Monetary Assessment Approach

Value for money is an essential test against which Procuring Entities must justify their procurement transactions while spending public funds. On the contrary, the pursuit for value for money in public spending remains to be a big challenge to governments and their institutions across most of developing countries which is further complicated by rigidity of laws and regulations. The specific focus of the study was to find out the role of effective competition towards the achievement of value for money, determine the contribution of procedural transparency on the achievement of value for money and examine the contribution of proper annual procurement planning on the achievement of value for money. Cross sectional research design was used to undertake the study where Moshi Municipal Council was selected as a study area located in Moshi Municipality. Purposive and simple random sampling techniques were used to pick a sample of 38 respondents including members of Procurement Management Unit, Tender Boards and User Department. Multiple approaches including questionnaire, interviews and documentary review were used to collect data. Data were analysed through applying interpretive and reflexive qualitative approaches while quantitative techniques involved utilisation of descriptive statistics. Findings indicated that there was effective competition throughout the procurement cycle because specifications were adequately and competitively prepared by user departments, competitive methods such as competitive tendering and competitive quotation were used and bidders were given fair and equal chances to compete. Moreover, annual procurement plans were adequately formulated and implemented as per transactions but some of them were not executed as planned. Based on the evidences presented by the findings it was concluded that the Council has been achieving value for money (by non-monetary assessment) in most of its procurement transactions apart from the challenges addressed on the study.