Evaluation of the Current Procurement Planning Process in a District Municipality

Procurement planning represents an important tool within municipal budget activities. Without an effective procurement planning process, municipalities often experience huge challenges towards determining what to buy, when, where and how. South African municipalities often experience procurement planning related challenges with the blame leveled against a procurement planning process. The purpose of this study is to explore a district municipality’s current procurement planning process following indications that the municipality was experiencing serious procurement planning challenges. The population for the study consisted of all employees who work in the municipality from which 10 participants were purposively selected for the sample. The study findings revealed that the municipality does make efforts to draw procurement plans which are not formally implemented. Failure to formally implement the procurement plans can lead to non-compliance, and unauthorised, irregular, wasteful expenditure. A similar study in other district municipalities is recommended, and further, there is need to conduct a repeat of the same study after five years to assess improvements or deteriorations of the procurement planning process.