The implementation of Electronic Government Procurement (e-GP) has been a landmark success of the government for building "Digital Bangladesh Vision" as a tender worth around Tk7926.64 billion (792,664 crore) was invited through e-GP up to the middle of December 2023, reports BSS.
The e-GP system started its journey in Bangladesh on June 2, 2011. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had inaugurated the e-GP portal on the day.
Since 2012, the e-GP system witnessed an exponential growth over a decade with wider adoption of the electronic tendering across the government procuring entities and private sector tenderers.
The newly-established Bangladesh Public Procurement Authority (BPPA) is the custodian of the system. The e-GP is practiced by Procuring Entities and the tenderers.
While talking to the news agency, Planning Minister MA Mannan said the BPPA has been created to strengthen further the operations of the electronic government procurement. Efforts are on to enhance the coverage of the e-GP to 100 per cent, he added.
BPPA CEO Mohammed Shoheler Rahman Chowdhury said: "We're not looking at the percentage of e-GP coverage in the country. We're advancing in a targeted way. We've targeted 32 larger procuring agencies which consume about 80 per cent of total public procurement of the country and most of them are now conducting procurement through e-GP system."
There has been a Cabinet decision to implement e-GP in all procuring entities. "We're also focusing on the health and education sectors to digitise their procurement," he mentioned.
Recently, the Secretary of Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division, under which CPTU was a unit, issued a demi official letter to all ministries to implement e-GP in their respective divisions and departments.
"We're also issuing individual letters to the entities, still publishing offline tender notices in the press, requesting them to invite tenders through e-GP system instead of the offline medium," noted the first CEO of the BPPA.
AKM Shamsuddoha, president of Dohatec New Media, an international software vendor closely associated with e-GP system, said Bangladesh saves $1.1 billion a year from the use of the e-GP system according to the World Bank. The system has reduced the average procurement processing time from 100 days to 57 days.
He said the BPPA, formerly CPTU, has trained over 22,000 government officials and over 15,000 registered tenderers and 1,300 bankers.
"We were honoured to be a part of this internationally recognised success by way of involvement in the development of the system, operation maintenance, and providing professional training to bring about the required capacity building in the government personnel," he added.
Up to December 17, 2023, a total of 761,146 tenders were invited through e-GP involving a total estimated cost of Tk 7926.64 billion. The number is growing day by day. The government earns revenue worth about Tk 4.00 billion a year through the e-GP system.
At present about 40 per cent of the national budget and 80 per cent of the Annual Development Programme (ADP) are spent on public procurement. Total annual expenditures on public procurement are worth about US$30 billion a year.
The reforms implemented in the domain of public procurement have diverse aspects like capacity development and professionalisation, citizen engagement and awareness, updating of standard tender documents, introduction of significant features in the e-GP system, adoption of Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP) Policy and transformation of the Central Procurement Technical Unit into Bangladesh Public Procurement Authority (BPPA).
On July 5, 2023, the Planning Minister placed the Bangladesh Public Procurement Authority (BPPA) Bill 2023 in the Jatiya Sangsad (JS).
The government appointed Mohammed Shoheler Rahman Chowdhury as the first Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the newly-established BPPA on November 28, 2023.