The government is planning to enroll electronic government procurement (e-GP) or e-tendering in its all ministries and divisions by July next in a bid to ensure more transparency and accountability in public procurement, said Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal.
“All the ministries and divisions are likely to come under e-GP system by July next,” he told UNB.
The Planning Minister said the government is now carrying out e-tendering activities on a small scale at four key government agencies and the e-GP will be made mandatory as all will have to go through e-tendering process to ensure utmost transparency and accountability in the tendering process.
He said full implementation of the e-GP system will help eliminate the hassles over tender manipulation while the bidding price is likely to be made either plus or minus 5 percent of the tender price to ensure the quality of works.
Mustafa Kamal said this will also discourage the trend of taking work with much less than the tender price.
He said e-tendering in every ministry and division will be a time-befitting initiative as expected by the Prime Minister. “Once e-tendering is introduced on full scale, gross irregularities will be stopped in public procurement.”
The minister said initiatives will also be taken so that no contract awardee could sell his or her work or bid to others in an attempt to ensure standard of works.
Mustafa Kamal told the news agency that capacity is also being enhanced at the agency concerned of the Planning Ministry to carry on e-tendering activities in a bigger way with the improvement of the relevant software.
As of September 4, 2014, some 9,875 tenderers and consultants have been registered with the e-GP process, including four international tenderers. Besides, 25 more individual consultants have registered with the e-tendering system, according to the Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU) of the Ministry.
Besides, some 9,415 tenders have been invited through e-GP system of which some 6,628 contracts have been awarded.
The World Bank is pressing the government in implementing e-GP in the country through Public Procurement Reform Project (PPRP-II) for improved procurement outcomes, starting with the key procuring agencies.
Some four key government agencies - Roads and Highways Department (RHD), Local Government Engineering Department (LGED), Bangladesh Rural Electrification Board (BREB), and Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB) -- started online procurement through the newly-introduced e-GP system.
Later, 26 other government agencies have been included in the e-GP system to ensure transparency and accountability in public procurement.
Contacted, officials at the CPTU under the Planning Ministry said they have successfully trained up all procurement-related officials of the four target agencies and brought them under e-GP.
They said that process of bringing Public Works Department under e-GP is on as well and when that is done, all tenders under RHD, LGED, REB, BWDB and PWD, which covers almost 80 percent of all government tenders, can be done through e-GP.
Sources at the Planning Ministry said the extension period of PPRP II project aims to slowly role out e-GP to other government agencies because it requires training up the officials, educating bidders and
managing the change process to prepare any procuring agency to follow e-GP in procurement.
It took South Korea 15 years to achieve 98 percent compliance with electronic procurement. Japan and India are yet to make it mandatory, though they started long before Bangladesh did.
But considering the way the country is moving, the country would be able to make it mandatory fairly quickly compared to most of the other countries, hoped an official.