Google is among the international firms and foreign entities that have so far enlisted with the National e-Procurement System of Tanzania, it was revealed in Arusha.
That was stated here by the Chief Executive Officer of the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) Eliakim Maswi
He pointed out that despite being still rather new, the National e-Procurement System of Tanzania (NeST) has so far enrolled 1046 procuring entities both national and international.
Top digital media platforms such as Google, the giant search engine and Meta (which runs Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) are among the entities registered under NeST.
Maswi made the revelation during the 3rd Annual General Meeting of the Association of Procurement and Supplies Professionals (APSP) which was taking place at the Arusha International Conference Center.
“Already 909 firms have started using the NeST system, but as we continue educating the mass and training other users, this number will gradually increase,” explained Maswi.
Through NeST a total of 2802 contracts valued at nearly 1 trillion/- have been awarded to various firms in the country.
The PPRA official added that this latest e-Procurement platform is even more transparent, fool-proof and totally shielded from hacks to guarantee safety among users.
The National e-Procurement System of Tanzania (NeST), is the latest electronic system which facilitates e-registration, e-tendering, e-contract management, e-payment, e-catalogue and e-auctioning processes.
According to the PPRA Executive Officer, NeST replaces the former Tanzanian National e-Procurement System TANePS which was a web-based, collaborative system, developed in accordance with the requirement of public procurement laws, to facilitate public procurement processes in Tanzania.
But while TANePS also offered a secure, interactive, dynamic environment for carrying out procurement of all categories, the system was actually temporarily hired from Greek developers.
That was during the time when Tanzania was still working on its own system, which upon completion it eventually turned out to be the current NeST.
“NeST is our own system built by Tanzanian experts and tailor-made to address all requirements of public purchases, tendering and payments,” Maswi maintained.
As of now the system has registered 11,640 tenders, with more than 250 bids opening daily and a total of 356 submissions already on the platform.
The Chairperson of the Association of Procurement and Supplies Professionals (APSP) Emmanuel Metusela Urembo said the new NeST platform has helped to prune out dubious tenderers.
“When things go wrong in the purchasing lines it was always the procurement and supplies officers who shouldered the blame, but in reality, it is the suspicious tendering firms that used to muddle things up,” said the APSP leader.
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