The role of public procurement legislation in promoting business opportunities to private organizations in Rwanda: “Case study of Kigali City”

Abstract

Nowadays, many countries have reformed their procurement legal framework to make it more transparent, competitive, economic, accountable and efficient. This has been due to the desire to provide equal opportunities to all potential bidders which leads to efficient utilization of resources. This research concerns the role of public procurement legislation in promoting business opportunities to private organizations in Rwanda. A case study was 243 private organizations in Kigali City. The study aims to assess the applicability of procurement legislation by private firms, their intentions and how they participated in public tenders. The questionnaire addressed to 48 respondents from 16 private firms was used to collect primary data. The interviews were conducted with one leader from the regulator management on public procurement (Rwanda Public Procurement Authority), one respondent from the facilitator management of private firms (Private Sector Federation) and one respondent from the National Independent Review Panel. After the analysis of data from those respondents, the findings have shown that the implementation of public procurement legislation, especially in concerning of transparency, preference schemes and fighting corruption by private firms provided positive results in general. However, some challenges were raised by both parties’ managements and private organizations and suggestions addressed to the government, to the private sector and to the future researchers have been formulated. The value of this research is to analyze the role of public procurement legislation in promoting business opportunities to private organizations in Rwanda.