The Council of Governors (CoG) is threatening to take legal action against the National Treasury over the decision to continue with the implantation of the electronic government procurement system which had been annulled by the National Assembly.
CoG Chair Ahmed Abdullahi says the roll out of the system which has been done hurriedly has led to disruption of service delivery in counties.
“We note that the roll out of the e-GP from it’s conception has been hasty, incomprehensive and marred with inconsistencies that have caused confusion and paralysis of service delivery across procuring entities. Further the Circular and it’s implementation is devoid of legal and regulatory basis and hasn’t considered the distinctiveness of county governments,” said Ahmed Abdullahi, Chair CoG and Wajir County Governor.
On August 19 this year, the National Assembly annulled the Treasury Circular No. 04/2025 which had directed all pubic entities and county governments to do their procurement through the system by July 1, 2025.
According to the National Treasury John Mbadi, full implementation of e-GP is expected to save the country at least Ksh 100 billion annually by ensuring among others, reduced cost of goods and services, increased transparency, improved efficiency in procurement by minimizing the procurement cycle time.
“The experience has shown that country where this e-procurement has been implemented, that in the first year of implementation, you save 10-15pc of procurable budget. 10p of our procurable budget is about Ksh 100 billion. So we expect to save between Ksh 100 billion and Ksh 150 billion and it can even be more,” said Mbadi during a briefing on implementation status of the e-procurement system.
According to Mbadi, 31 counties have so far submitted their budgets which are currently being scrutinized before being uploaded to e-GP and the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS).
“The remaining 16 counties have not been processed by the Controller of Budget. Maybe some have not even submitted their budget requests to the CoB. Out of the 31 in the IFMIS, 4 have cleared and sent to the e-GP,” added Mbadi.
However, CoG maintains that with the annulment of the circular issued by treasury, procuring entities will revert to the public procurement framework as before which is provided for in existing laws and regulations.
The Council now is threatening to sue Treasury over implementation of the system which Abdullahi says has hampered service delivery to critical sectors such as health given that Treasury is yet to allows uploading of procurement plans and full operationalization of the FY2025/26 budgets unless done through e-GP.
“In this regard, the Council asks the National Treasury to lift any administrative blocks related to the implementation of the e-GP failure to which we shall be constrained to seek legal redress on the underlying issues as this borders on provision of services across all counties,” he stated.
Latest data by Treasury shows that 1285 procuring entities have been registered on the system, 7637 suppliers registered while hundreds others trained on the system.
