Influence Of Procurement Practices On The Implementation Of County Government Development Projects: A Case Of Kilifi County

Abstract

For economic development to take place in any society there must be development plans and programmes that should be run. The programmes usually are made of projects that have specific deliverables over a given time and have specific financial budgets (financial resources) attached to them that are usually limited. Project implementation is a concept that has taken the centre stage of government development plans in Kenya today. The concept of procurement practices is not very new in Kenya owing to the fact that the country has been heavily benchmarking from the Organization for economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries that have perfected on the idea behind proper contractual management and procurement practices. Despite the fact that there are a number of seminars and trips that have been funded by the government for the Ministry of Finance to come up with clear rules and regulations for standard procurement among government agencies, there is still a violation of the procurement practices to or over the tune of 39.89% nationally and to or over 47.1% within the counties, leading to delayed or failed project implementation. This therefore necessitated such a study. The study was therefore carried out with the aim of examining the influence of procurement practices on the implementation of county government development projects; a case of Kilifi County, Kenya. This study was guided by the following objectives: to establish the influence of procurement planning on development projects implementation by county governments in Kenya; to determine the influence of supplier selection on effective project implementation by county governments in Kenya; to examine the influence of procurement monitoring and evaluation on effective project implementation by county governments in Kenya and to establish the influence of contract review on effective project implementation by county governments in Kenya. This study adopted a descriptive research design. The target population was 388 respondents. The sample size was 104 construction workers plus the other categories that totaled 147 respondents. The study employed both purposive and simple random sampling to obtain respondents for the study. The instrument of data collection was the use of a questionnaire. The reliability of the instruments was established using Cronbach’s alpha. Data analysis was done by use of SPSS version 22.0 and the hypothesis tested by use of Chi-square. The study achieved a response rate of 68.02% with 100 respondents responding positively, out of the 147 targeted. Male respondents dominated the study at 80% compared to the female who made only 20%.From the results: Majority (80%) of the respondents supported the idea that procurement planning has an influence on the implementation of county development projects; majority (90%) of the respondents supported the idea that supplier selection has an influence on the implementation of county development projects; majority of the respondents agreed that the procurement monitoring and evaluation practices influence the implementation of development projects. Researcher concluded that: procurement planning; supplier selection; procurement monitoring and evaluation; and contract review have an influence on the implementation of development projects run and implemented by the county government of Kilifi.