The impact of Government Protected Distributors on the Performance of other Public Procuring Entities in Tanzania: a case of Regional Medical Officers’ Procuring Units of Iringa and Ruvuma Region.

One of the key issues in good governance is spending public funds in an efficient, effective and economical manner, which may be achieved through among other measures the use of a value for money public procurement process coupled with accountability for procured goods and services. As one of the strategies for achieving value for money procurement objectives, the Government of Tanzania decided to have in place some public protected distributors from which other public procuring entities would source their goods, supplies and services which however, could not work as expected. In an attempt to investigate the impact which protected public intermediaries have on other public procuring entities, two regional medical offices for Iringa and Ruvuma were studied. The conclusion reached was that protected distributors affect the performance of other procuring entities adversely, due to existence of conflicting laws. Given the above conclusions it is recommended that all laws and regulations which govern public procurement should be harmonized to eliminate conflicting operations, and that protectionism of public distributors should be withdrawn thereby letting them to operate semi autonomously in an open competitive environment.