Favoritism and Public Procurement Performance at Mbarara City, Uganda

Abstract

This study was about favoritism and public procurement performance in Uganda using the case Mbarara City. Favoritism was assessed using two dimensions that included price-preference and bidder-preference and the way they affected public procurement performance in Mbarara City. The research design was cross-sectional involving the utilization of a quantitative approach. The analysis involved inferential statistics (Spearman correlation, coefficient of determination and regression). The results showed the strong influence of favoritism on the conduct of public procurement performance whereby more favoritism contributed to poor public procurement performance and less favoritism contributed to better public procurement performance. It was recommended that City councils should ensure adherence to procurement laws in order to curb political and public officers’ influence that leads to favoring certain people for procurements, as this will improve public procurement performance.