Procurement Planning & the Rwanda Biomedical Centre (RBC)

Established in 2011 through a merger of fourteen key health institutions, The Rwanda Biomedical Centre (RBC) is the nation’s central health implementation agency. RBC strives to improve the health of the Rwandan population by providing high quality, affordable and sustainable health care services. It seeks to accomplish this mandate through the implementation of preventative, rehabilitative, and curative health interventions.

RBC also conducts scientific research, provides diagnostics services, and implements innovative health interventions to protect the nation against diseases and other health threats. The mission of the entity is to promote high quality, affordable, and sustainable health care services to the population through evidence-based interventions and practices guided by ethics and professionalism. Its broader vision is “to become a Center of Excellence for the prosperity of the country, ensuring quality health service delivery, education and research.”

About the Study

This study analysed the effect of procurement planning on the performance of public institutions using the case illustration of the RBC, one of the public institutions in Rwanda with a mandate to promote health in the country.

However, the institution has been marred by poor procurement practices. In the light these, the study set out to achieve four main objectives — to examine the significance of a proper needs assessment on RBC’s performance; establish the effect of procurement cost estimation on RBC’s performance; assess the effect of quality specification of goods on RBC’s performance; and establish the strategies for addressing the challenges faced in the procurement planning practices at RBC.

The study posits that public institutions should purchase both effectively and efficiently by avoiding irresponsible procurement practices that often result in wastage, stock wear and tear, over invoicing, unplanned expenditure, shortage of goods, and poor-quality products.

Our findings provide fresh insights into the current challenges facing the public institution’s performance — with a view to improving on the quality of procurement through — cost cutting purchase, reduced delivery period, quality attainment, efficient and effective processes. Having observed the “misplaced priorities of funds due to lack of state-of-the-art procurement planning practices in the institution”, — it’s our hope that this study will enable RBC better prioritize its procurement planning practices, and thereby, leading to quality procurement and improved performance.

Implications

Indeed, a Quartz article reported in the Rwandan Daily, i.e., The New Times, it was evident that the components of our conceptual framework were substantiated. For example, in his summary of Rwanda’s E-Procurement system, Augustus Seminega, Director General of Rwanda Public Procurement Authority, pointed out that:

“Government procurement officials should take advantage of the time saved in transactions to ensure compliance, transparency, competition, fairness and dedicate more time to achieve value for money, efficiency and effectiveness.”

The report reads further:

“…in 2013, the Rwandan government approached the World Bank to fund a feasibility study on the implementation of its e-GP system. The feasibility study identified major challenges and recommended solutions. Some of the challenges included: inconvenient business registration; inaccurate management information & analytics; lack of one-stop procurement portal; and inefficient document and records management system.”

Interestingly, the government of Rwanda has been championing a course for the development an eprocurement system since 2017, as the case of the launch of ‘Umucyo’ (meaning transparency) shows.

Finally, as another African study on the buying decision-making of Medical Laboratory Equipment in Kenyan Public Hospitals not long ago pointed out, “three broad implications derived from the conclusion of the study” — The first, being that “public hospitals in Kenya should adopt participatory purchasing models where more stakeholders such as buyers, lower-level employees in hospital departments (users), physicians, and procurement officers included in the buying decision-making. This would ensure that the hospitals do not rely only on top management employees in making such critical decisions. This is expected to increase quality of purchases and thus increasing healthcare delivery.”

Second, “in doing research on capital laboratory medical equipment during the procurement process, the members responsible for researching are encouraged to utilise electronic sources of information more […] because these sources are efficient and cost effective. They also provide deeper information and can be used to countercheck the information provided by sales or other supplier representatives.”

Third, it was recommended “that in the process of procuring capital laboratory medical equipment, the participants in the procurement process should not overlook the performance feedback and evaluation phase […] because this phase is critical in informing how well the purchased equipment is performing.”

Abridged Sources:

Madichie, N.O., & Sua, J. 2021. Medical Laboratory Equipment business buying decision-making: The case of Kenyan Public Hospitals. Sage Advance. Preprint. https://doi.org/10.31124/advance.13668848.v1

Muberarugo, A., & Madichie, N. (2022). Procurement Planning & the Rwanda Biomedical Centre (RBC) (№8609). EasyChair. https://easychair.org/publications/preprint_open/6cG8

Originally published at https://easychair.org on August 6, 2022.