KZN introduces innovative e-procurement system to combat corruption

KwaZulu-Natal Finance MEC Francois Rodgers has on Tuesday introduced a first-of-its-kind system to stop corruption and politically-connected favouritism in the procurement system, which has kept him frustrated since he took over the position.

The Electronic Procurement System (e-Procurement), which was announced during a press briefing held in Pietermaritzburg, was designed to block unscrupulous tenderpreneurs from undeservedly dominating government tenders that have earned them a multimillionaire or multibillionaire status.

Rodgers said KwaZulu-Natal was the first province to implement the e-procurement system, which he believed was unlikely to be corrupted.

“We are trying to deal with fruitless and wasteful expenditure, fraud, and corruption.

“The system would be monitored and controlled by the treasury, and each department would no longer be able to do its procurement,” he said.

The provincial government adopted the system from the Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment (DFFE).

Rodgers said the system would help the government to cut down on wasteful expenditure that has robbed the provinces of billions of rands through irregular awarding of tenders to unqualifying bidders.

“I don’t need to tell you that when you look at fraud, corruption and wasteful expenditure, it is normally in the supply chain management, and those problems are around the human interaction within the supply chain.

“This electronic system is going to take away the human factor out of the awarding of tenders and procurement,” said Rodgers.

He said the system would have a significant impact on building a capable and ethical state.

He said e-procurement would take effect at the beginning of the 2026 financial year.

He said his department was in a desperate move to save money after Finance Minister Enoch Godogwana’s announcement that provinces would no longer be allowed to borrow money.

He said Godogwana’s announcement was based on the fact that the country had already reached an exorbitant figure of repayment of interest on loans, meaning that it was spending around R1.2 billion a day repaying loans, “which is more than we spend on education and health in the entire country.”

He said that willy-nilly spending by the departments through budgeting on money that they do not have would come to an end “because if we continue to do that, health, education and social development would continue to struggle”.

He said taking extra caution in expenditure was meant to make sure that health, education and social development, which are frontline departments, have enough money to operate properly.

“That means other departments, other than the front-line departments, are going to have to relook at how we allocate the money,” he said.

Explaining how the e-procurement functions, provincial finance head Carol Coetzee said applying information technology in the procurement would be the province's fundamental shift from the corruptible manual system.

She said the department had analysed all the systems that the various government spheres used to run procurement and found that the DFFE was the best.

She said since it was owned by the national department, the province did not have to spend exorbitant money buying it.

“Departments are buying assets without a budget. We want to stop that.

“When you log into the system and you put in a requisition of what you need, then the system would ask you ‘Do you have a budget’ and the budget control would have to authorise the budget on the system and say ‘yes, there is a budget’ and the system would lock the estimated amount before you even start the process,” said Coetzee.

She said the e-system would prevent the department’s procurement officials from contacting suppliers they prefer for favours.

She said the officials would indicate how many quotes they were looking for, and the system would go to the central supplier database to draw the number of suppliers that provide the commodity.

“Those quotations would not be accessible to anyone until the date for the quotations is closed.

“Currently, what is happening is you source five quotations, you get four quotations and you phone your friend, you tell him that you have received four quotations and these are the prices, and say if you give us your price below that, you are going to be rewarded,” said Coetzee.