The Malaysian Government’s National Anti-Corruption Plan (NACP) 2020 targets the introduction of procurement legislation by the end 2023. This provides an opportunity to improve transparency and accountability mechanisms to the current procurement methods, including direct negotiations, and address weaknesses in the current circulars.

The paper sheds light on the practice of direct negotiation by exploring limitations in the current rules and evaluating compliance in present practices based on empirical evidence.

Drawing data from the Auditor-General’s Report 2014-18, this paper proposes policy recommendations based on international best practices and a series of roundtable discussions from compliance practitioners and various stakeholders.