Electronic tender: Public money counts

It sounds good that the Mayor of the Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC), Anissul Haq, has turned down a plea of some of his Councillors to shift away from e-tender. The logic they raised at a recent meeting, according to newspaper reports, is that they cannot help tenderers belonging to their party get contracts if e-tender is practised.
Interestingly, the positions of both the Mayor and the Councillors did good advocacy for e-tender in Bangladesh. First, the Mayor stuck to his position to continue with e-tender. Second, the Councillors, who suggested discontinuation of the new system, admitted that no favour or meddling is possible in the system of electronic tender.
The encounter of the Mayor with the Councillors is an encouraging sign for the government's efforts to digitise the country's public procurement system to ensure transparency, accountability, efficiency and fair competition. The government, in 2011, introduced the e-GP system for procurement in the local government engineering department, roads and highways department, water development board and the rural electricity board. The process of digitising public procurement in Bangladesh started through implementation of electronic government procurement (e-GP). The electronic system involves the entire cycle of procurement starting from planning to execution, monitoring and performance measurement. The e-tender is part of e-GP, a self-compliant electronic procurement system.
It is designed to plug all possible loopholes in the process of public procurement to check any kind of unfair means where all concerned parties have specific access in specific time limit without any scope for connivance and physical communications. The safety and security of the system is authenticated by the internally acclaimed certifiers.
The government procures various goods, works and services under the mandate of Public Procurement Act (PPA-2006) and the Public Procurement Rules (2008). The main principle of such legal framework is to ensure the value for money. Public procurement is conducted with public money. Therefore, the government is committed to ensuring transparency, accountability, economy, efficiency and fair competition in the process of public procurement.
The people also have the right to know how their money is spent. The e-GP system is thus developed to let people know the relevant information about public procurement as per the PPA, PPR and the Right to Information Act (RTI). However, the government is revising these as per the need of the time to establish a well-functioning public procurement system in the country.
The benefits of e-GP, among others, are: the entire process of public procurement is conducted through a national and central electronic platform; an electronic procurement information system has been established to process tenders and monitor the adherence to the law and rules. Introduction of the electronic system is removing existing hassles and complexities in public procurement process; wider competition is ensured as there is a scope for fair competition in e-GP system. The  conventional dropping of tenders physically in boxes has been removed in e-GP system that promises fairness and transparency in the first place.
The Prime Minister inaugurated the National Electronic Government Procurement (e-GP) Portal www.eprocure.gov.bd on June 02, 2011 and the e-tender in public procurement started through this in Bangladesh.  The National e-GP Guidelines was approved on January 25, 2011. The e-GP system was first piloted by the Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU) in 2011 in four target agencies under the Public Procurement Reform Project-II. The target agencies are Local Government Engineering Department (LGED), Roads and Highways Department (RHD), Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB) and Bangladesh Rural Electrification Board (BREB). Afterwards, the process is going on to include all public procurement in e-GP system.
To conduct electronic public procurement effectively, a total of 2346 procuring entities of 185 agencies under 37 ministries/divisions have been connected to e-GP, as on April 07, 2016. The process is on to connect all ministries/divisions with e-GP by December 2016. Until the date about 31 thousand contracts worth over Tk 210.0 billion have been awarded through e-GP system. For e-tendering a total of about 21 thousand tenderers have registered with e-GP. To receive tender security, performance security, registration fee, renewal fee and tender document fee, CPTU signed MoUs with 40 banks. Training of officials of various ministries/divisions/agencies including procuring entities and banks are going on. Besides, to support the e-GP implementation activities Help Desks have been established in four target agencies (LGED, RHD, BWDB and BREB) including CPTU. Users of e-GP are provided phone and email contacts from the Help Desks. Tenderers are getting all supports about e-GP through the Help Desk.
In line with a directive of the Prime Minister the process is going on to include all procurement activities of government, semi-government and autonomous bodies by December 2016. Full implementation of the electronic tendering system will pave the way for wider and fair competition in public procurement and play a leading role in building Digital Bangladesh.
A one-day workshop to strengthen awareness of all concerned in public procurement and increase adoption of e-GP is being conducted by CPTU in districts in phases. District-level procuring entities, tenderers, civil society, media, banks are participating in such awareness workshops to be held in all 64 districts. Until March 2016, 41 workshops have been conducted. A Government-Contractors Forum has also been formed at the district level between procuring entities and tenderers. Until March, 2016, 32 forums have been formed.   
  The CPTU is taking observations and opinions of the users to simplify and make the e-GP system user-friendly. Response, so far, received from the stakeholders is heartening.
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