Effect of Contract Management on Public Procurement Performance in Rwanda. A Case of Ministry of Education (MINEDUC)

Abstract

This research aimed to examine the link among contract management practices and Public procurement performance at MINEDUC during the period from 2020 up to 2022. Researcher stated research problems where the inadequate legal provision to regulate contract management for public procuring entities; several weaknesses in the management of public procurement contracts for works were identified. These included; improper signing of contracts in some cases, some of the contracts lacked important information and documents such as conditions of contract, drawings and specifications and some of the contracts contained non-legal documents such as invitation for bids and instructions. Basing on the observed malpractices and incompliance, it seems that the question of effective contract management in order to achieve public procurement performance in public sector is still a challenge that has to be studied and provide recommendations to the policy makers and other stakeholders. The study takes theoretical references on general theories as the theory of procurement discipline and contract theory. The entire population is target population of 212 including employees of MINEDUC; specifically, the total sample size is 128 respondents who were selected through simple random sampling technique. Therefore, the questionnaire and documentation research techniques were used during data collection. The findings reveal that in long run, the public procurement performance in MINEDUC is explained by effective probabilities of contract negotiation; contract execution; contract monitoring and evaluation that all are less than 10%. Basing on simple regression of each factor influences the public procurement performance in MINEDUC. The R² = 0.955 and Adjusted R² = 0.949, show the goodness of fit of the estimated model. Up to 95.5% of long-run appreciation in public procurement performance in MINEDUC is influenced by changes in contract negotiation; contract execution; contract monitoring and evaluation as implemented by MINEDUC. According to the research, the correlation of 0.952 or (95.2%) is located in the interval [0.75 - 1.00] categorized as positive and very high correlation. This leads to confirm that there is significant relationship between contract management practices and public procurement performance in MINEDUC.