Bangladesh's newly-introduced electronic procurement has become popular among the government agencies as many public entities are lobbying to adopt the new online purchasing system, officials said Saturday.
Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU) officials said they have received nearly 25 applications from different agencies of the government to include them in the e-government procurement (e-GP) system.
"It is encouraging for us that many public agencies are coming forward to enter the online purchasing system. It is really a great news for the country," Amulya Kumar Debhnath, Director General of the CPTU told the FE.
The government has taken a move to ensure public procurement through the online system in a bid to check fraud and collusion in the tendering process for checking misappropriation of the public funds.
Bangladesh is rated one of the vulnerable countries in public fund management as most of the time the musclemen and political leaders scramble, often violently, to get contracts of the public works through the usual government bidding process.
Under the move, four state-owned agencies including the Local Government and Engineering Department, Roads and Highways Department, Rural Electrification Board and Water Development Board already came under the e-GP project in the first phase in June last year.
Later, the government's leading procuring entity - the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB)-- has been included in the CPTU's online procurement system two months back.
CPTU chief Debhnath said leading government agencies including the Dhaka Power Development Company, Bangladesh Bridge Authority, Power Grid Company of Bangladesh, and Gas Transmission Company Ltd. are in the queue for introducing the e-GP in tendering.
The agencies have already applied for getting entrance in the government's e-GP system, he said.
"We have sought some information like the internet connectivity, IT professionals and adequate manpower of the aspirant public agencies. We will scrutinise their capacity. Then we will select some of them to come under the e-GP," said he said.
In the coming phase, we may include nearly 4-5 organisations in the online procurement system, he added.
A high-powered committee, led by Planning Minister AK Khandker, is working to select the public entities for inclusion in the e-GP.
A director of the CPTU said since many government agencies are interested to enter the online procurement system, we are training manpower in all the prospective public entities so that they could handle the e-tendering smoothly.
Under the funding of the World Bank, the CPTU is working to develop Bangladesh's entire public purchase under the online procurement to establish good governance, efficiency, transparency and accountability.
CPTU has already developed an integrated and comprehensive dynamic procurement website to ensure the widest possible exposure to procurement plans, actual procurement notices of over Tk 10 million and contract awards. This also marked the starting point for data acquisition for monitoring, officials said.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): FHM Humayan Kabir
Quelle/Source: Financial Express Bangladesh, 31.12.2012
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