Transparency in public procurement in Senegal and Togo

Public procurement now accounts for a significant proportion of our national budgets. This budget, it should be remembered, is partly made up of fiscal resources, which in turn are fed by citizens’ contributions in the form of taxes, VAT, etc. It therefore appears that public procurement requires special attention from citizens, since it is they who partly, albeit indirectly, finance their state’s acquisitions of works, supplies and services. In this respect, it is legitimate for citizens to demand that the rules of transparency be respected when public resources have to be committed for public procurement purposes. Welcomed with great fanfare by Community bodies when it was first introduced, transparency, which was a principle transposed by Senegal and Togo to clean up the public procurement sector, is nevertheless coming up against practices which, at the very least, can be described as deviant. These practices will be addressed in turn through the award procedures and control mechanisms, against a backdrop of recommendations.