- Kenya Power has set aside $37 million of its procurement budget during the current financial year to women, youth and persons with disabilities (PWDs) under the AGPO programme despite low uptake of the tenders allocated to these groups.
- The low uptake is due to reasons ranging from lack of duly registered and compliant business enterprises and low understanding of the e-procurement system. a
- Kenya has a legal requirement for women, youth and persons with disabilities to access 30 percent of Government Procurement opportunities
Kenya Power has set aside $37 million of its procurement budget during the current financial year to women, youth and persons with disabilities (PWDs) under the Access to Government Procurement Opportunities (AGPO) program despite low uptake of the tenders allocated to these groups.
The utility company has noted that of the three groups, women continue to lag behind in the uptake of the procurement opportunities.
The low uptake is due to reasons ranging from lack of duly registered and compliant business enterprises, low understanding of the e-procurement system and failure to ensure that the goods targeted for procurement meet the requisite acceptance tests.
“The opportunities exist but women feel that this is a very technical area and as a result, the uptake of these tenders has been very low. The few women who are getting the tenders perform very well by ensuring that they give the best to the Company,” said John Ngeno, Kenya Power’s General Manager, Supply Chain.
To address this situation and raise the number of women suppliers, the Company is seeking to partner with women groups to sensitize them on procurement processes and create awareness of existing opportunities.
“We are calling on groups to partner with Kenya Power in workshops and other trainings where we can share knowledge on e-procurement and opportunities that exist for them within the Company. We are confident that by reaching out we can have many of them taking up the tenders,” said Ngeno.
To bridge the knowledge gap, the Company is carrying out pre-bid conferences where bidders are taken through the various tender requirements, processes for registration as suppliers, and uploading of documents on the procurement portal.
During the last financial year, Kenya Power set aside $16 million of its procurement budget for women, youth and PWDs tenders out of which only $4.8 million was taken up.
Kenya has a legal requirement for women, youth and persons with disabilities to access 30 percent of Government Procurement opportunities which was officially launched by the former President, Uhuru Kenyatta in October, 2013.
The AGPO program is founded on the the Constitution of Kenya, 2010 Article 227 on the fair equitable, transparent and cost-effective public procurement of goods and services, the Constitution of Kenya, 2010 Article 55 on affirmative action and the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act, 2015.
The aim of the AGPO program is to facilitate the enterprises owned by women, youth and persons with disabilities to be able to participate in Government opportunities.
Latest data from the AGPO indicates that the composition of firms registered with the programme is 54 percent youth, 41 percent women and 5 percent persons with disability. The highest number of registered firms are in Nairobi county at 67 percent, Mombasa county 6 percent and Kiambu county 5 percent.
Some of the main challenges that inhibit the special group from applying for the tenders include, lack of understanding of the bidding process, lack of invoice financing to fund the tender with majority of the tenders in the construction related businesses with most of the AGPO registered firms in the service sector especially trade.
