Accra: When the latest critique of the government's 'Big Push' road programme surfaced, it triggered exactly the reaction one would expect: outrage, suspicion, and a renewed insistence that all contracts should have gone through open competitive tendering. It is an intuitively appealing argument. After all, competitive tendering is widely regarded as the gold standard of public procurement, synonymous with transparency, fairness, and value for money.
According to Ghana Web, procurement is not governed by intuition. It is governed by law, context, and trade-offs. The central question, therefore, is not whether competitive tendering is desirable. It is whether, in this specific case, it was feasible, proportionate, and fit for purpose. This article addresses that question by interrogating Ghana's procurement law and drawing on established insights from infrastructure procurement practice.
Ghana's Public Procurement Act (Act 663, as amended) does not impose a one-size-fits-all approach. It establishes competitive tendering as the default, yes, but it also explicitly provides for restricted tendering and single-source procurement under defined conditions. These are not loopholes. They are deliberate instruments designed to respond to real-world constraints: limited supplier markets, urgency, and project complexity.
The legitimacy of these alternative procurement methods rests not merely on their existence in law, but on whether the statutory thresholds were properly met and documented. That is where scrutiny should be directed. The Big Push reportedly involves the award of dozens of major road contracts within a compressed timeframe, making accelerated infrastructure delivery not routine or regular. Subjecting every package to full, open competitive tendering under such conditions introduces significant transaction burdens: lengthy bid periods, complex evaluations, and administrative delays.
A persistent assumption in the current discourse is that open tendering guarantees robust competition. However, Ghana's road construction sector is not infinitely deep. The number of firms with the technical capacity, equipment base, and financial strength to execute large-scale road projects is limited. Open tendering in such a market can produce a familiar outcome: a long list of bidders, but only a small subset of credible contenders. The appearance of competition is created, but the outcome is often predictable.
Unlike restricted tendering, single-source procurement removes competition entirely. It is the most sensitive method in the procurement toolbox and must be treated as such. The law permits it only under strict conditions and places a heavy burden of justification on the procuring entity. This is where public concern is most justified. If single-source procurement was used, critical questions about the specific conditions justifying its use, the proper acquisition of approvals, and the public defensibility of the justifications are crucial.
While much attention has focused on procurement methods, two equally important issues remain underexplored: pricing and contract packaging. Ultimately, value for money is tested not by the method used, but by the cost outcomes. If per-kilometre costs significantly exceed benchmarks, then concerns about procurement choices gain credibility, regardless of the method adopted.
Moving the debate forward, the current discourse risks collapsing into a false binary: competitive tendering equals good governance; alternative methods equal wrongdoing. That framing is analytically weak and operationally unhelpful. Procurement is a strategic function that must balance time, cost, capacity, and risk. The appropriate question is not whether one method is inherently superior, but whether the chosen method was justified, properly applied, and well-governed.