Editorials

EDITORIAL: Deliver quality works

News that National Assembly Speaker has approved a bill that seeks to amend the Public Procurement and Assets Disposal Act in order to restrict participation of foreign firms in contracts worth less than Sh1 billion is inspiring.

Rigathi Gachagua, the Mathira MP who has sponsored the Bill, says this is to protect local firms who have been effectively sidelined from mega infrastructural tenders.

In fact, he says, the aim is to protect Kenyan firms from what he calls the invasion by Chinese firms. True, Chinese firms have a heavy presence in infrastructure tenders, including the standard gauge railway, that are priced at hundreds of billions of shillings.

However, claims that local firms are being pushed out is a dangerous one especially when it comes to delivering quality works. The experience is that most of the local firms have failed to successfully undertake simple works such as building village bridges.

There is also a need to appreciate that there are special contracts that require a certain level of technical ability that cannot be simply ring-fenced based on pricing.

This demands that whatever law parliament enacts must be pegged on both quality and value for money. Without that the country may find itself in a paralysis when suppliers fail the test of capacity. Open tendering, at the end of the day, carries more benefits than blanket favours and restrictions as competition gets more global.