Economy

State to take all public tenders to online platform

treasury1

National Treasury building. FILE PHOTO | NMG

Kenya has started the search for an online platform that will process all public tenders and linked to the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) in a policy shift aimed at enhancing transparency and nabbing tax cheats.

The government Tuesday invited foreign and local firms to bid for installation of the e-procurement system.

It will be linked to the KRA, which has been pursuing suppliers earning billions of shillings from counties and State tenders without paying their share of taxes.

“The National Treasury invites sealed tenders from eligible candidates for the design, development, customization, supply, installation and maintenance of an electronic government procurement (e-Gp) system for the government of Kenya,” said Treasury in a public notice.

The system will be linked to the KRA, Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS), Registrar of Companies and the National Council for Persons with Disability for faster verification and flagging of corrupt dealings.

The KRA enforcement team has stepped up analysis of companies’ financial dealings, especially firms doing business with the national government and counties, to unearth tax cheats by matching their payments and income declared to the authority.

The authority says tax evasion by county and State suppliers is mainly done through faking invoices to inflate cost in a bid to cut duty obligations and failure by county governments to submit taxes withheld from the suppliers and employees.

Some government suppliers have also been filing nil returns even after earning taxable income.

This will be a departure from the present tendering system which involves a lot of paper work that has seen the taxman lose track of the billions involved in State tenders.

The National Treasury said Tuesday bidding for the system ends on September 9 with a decision expected later in the same month.