Factors affecting procurement performance in selected municipal assemblies in the Kumasi Metropolis, Ghana

Procurement continues to receive enormous attention in the public sector of developing countries due to the high amount of financial investment fueled into the function for the acquisition of goods works and services. Amidst the compliance measures such as the public procurement act or regulation instruments introduced to curtail the activities involved in the function there is also the inadequate measurement of procurement performance with a few done only on cost as compared to other functions that recognize this attempt as a key measure of continuous improvement. The relevance of measuring procurement performance as has been illustrated through research by many writers due to the fact that the materials and other acquisitions obtained through procurement accounts for about eighty percent of (80%) an institutions finances being private or public. Procurement performance measurement served the ability to meet environmental requirements, institutional demands and provide the creativity to develop strategies to respond to these demands. The current study was that of descriptive aimed at assessing the factors affecting procurement performance in the public. Procurement planning and staff competency were the key variables used to assess procurement performance in the Asokwa and Oforikrom Municipal Assemblies due to their recognition in the public procurement Act 914 of Ghana in Section 21 under Part 3 for procurement planning and staff competency also addressed in Section 18(3). Questionnaires were distributed to 150 purposely sampled personnel involved in procurement questioned under a 5-point Likert scale following which 142 responses were obtained.  Unscored by a quantitative research approach, the SPSS was used to analyze data through means statistics. The findings of the study revealed that procurement planning and staff competency affected procurement performance. In addition, all staff competencies listed provided a mean score within the range of 4.00 and above which implies that they all affect procurement performance. The researcher recommended future studies using same factors as variables of measure for a different case area to serve as variation and addition to knowledge. It was also suggested that other factors including budget or resource allocation, political interference, procurement procedures, contract management, quality of items produced, time delivery or lead time and many more be used as variables of measuring procurement performance in future studies.