Officials of the Ministry of Public Contracts say corruption reeks everywhere in that sector of the country.

They made the remarks during a seminar the Ministry organised to brief journalists on reforms in the public contract sector in Yaounde on Tuesday, July 8.

Presenting a paper on “Governance in the public contract sector”, the Inspector General for Evaluation of Performance in the Ministry of Public Contracts, Jonathan Fru, said this sector is the most corrupt everywhere in the world.

“The public contract sector in the world has been identified all over as the sector most exposed to corruption,” he said. To him, the manifestation of corruption in the sector is at the level of award, execution and control of contracts.

He said corruption makes it possible for the award of public contracts to a preselected bidder at the detriment of public interest.

Such unscrupulous awards, he went on, are void of transparency, competition, equality and fairness. It gives room for the violation of regulation and favoritism in the public contracts sector.

The effects of corruption in the sector, he went on, dealt a devastating blow to the country’s economy up to 2011. He revealed that huge sums of money were paid for abandoned and or poorly executed projects.

Thus, low consumption of state budget, incapacity to execute structural projects was the order of the day.

Such a chaotic situation, he said, was what pushed the President of the Republic to create the Ministry of Public Contracts.

That is why, he intimated, the greatest ambition of the Minister of Public Contracts has been to combat corruption in all its facets. He said the role of the Ministry is the sum total of a watchdog system that enables the Minister to track down corruption.

As a part of the anti-corruption measures, the Ministry has established a free telephone line 88200606 to enable victims call and report acts of corruption.

Through the line, the official revealed, the Ministry received 54 complaints in 2013 alone.

While evaluating the impact of the reforms in the public contract sector to fight corruption, Fru said Government has made enormous financial gains out of them.

According to him, the Ministry of Public Contracts helped the Government to save up to FCFA 150 billion in 2013 through the improvement of the quality of the award of public contracts as well as over FCFA 12 billion at the level of projects control.

He said it was because of the stringent control measures by the Ministry that 64 companies have been suspended between 2013 and 2014 for six to 24 months.

The Director in charge of public contracts control in the Ministry, Moise Victor Nlend, said the Ministry was out to ensure that regulations governing the sector are respected by all the stakeholders.

The control must span across the whole gamut of the sector from bidding, award and execution of contracts as well as the handing over of projects, he insisted.

He said before the Ministry of Public Contracts went to work with its watchdog role, contracts were not executed but were paid, buildings collapsed because of poor construction, while a majority of contracts were executed late.

Some officials would launch tenders for 12-horse power vehicles and finally buy those of 9-horse power and still pay the sum allocated for the former.

The Director said one official simply bought an old car, repaired it and presented it as a new car.

“A contract for the construction of a Government building was paid when it was still at the foundation level. That was the huge level of corruption that obtained before the creation of the Ministry of Public Contracts,” he said.

The Director of Public contracts at the Ministry, Valentin Epoupa Bassambo, said between 2006 and 2008, the global execution rate of the public investment budget stood only at 50 percent.

Over 32 percent of this rate was in the infrastructure and energy sector in terms of the non-execution of Public contracts. He enumerated all the actors involved in the public contracts sector and explained the role each of them is supposed to play to ensure the reign of checks and balances.

He also explained who qualifies to give what kind of contract, stating that transparency in the award and execution of contracts has to strive at all cost.

He analysed the legal framework governing the public contract sector in Cameroon, urging stakeholders to follow them scrupulously at their various levels.

The Secretary General in the Ministry of Public Contracts, Jean Tchoffo, said the Ministry has a very difficult watchdog role to play.

“Anywhere those public contracts are concerned, there is corruption,” he said.

While reacting to accusations from other ministries that the Ministry of Public Contracts frustrated the execution of the 2013 budget by way of bottlenecks, the officials said people hate them because they are meticulous in their controls.

The Minister Delegate at the Presidency in charge of Public Contracts, Abba Sadou, chaired the opening of the occasion in the presence of his colleague of Communication, Issa Tchiroma Bakary.

He called on journalists to master the reforms in the public contract sector so that they can be accurate when reporting on the issues.