e-GP in public procurement, a success story

The electronic government procurement (e-GP) has become a success story in the context of digitisation of government services, according to a governmrnt official, says a statement.

He said e-GP now constitutes more than 50 per cent of the total value of public procurement in the country. It has contributed to improvement in the law and order and saved time and costs.

Performance of public procurement has improved as the electronic system has an inbuilt mechanism for performance measurement, said Additional Secretary and Director General of CPTU, Md. Ali Noor.

Noor, a career civil servant who has multi-sector experiences and reputation as a member of the BCS Administrative Service, took over as DG CPTU on February 26 this year, says a statement.

He said competition has increased which is now 14 per tender (open and limited tender together) against only four per tender before introduction of the system. Efficiency has increased as more than 93 per cent contracts are now being awarded within the tender validity period, he mentioned.

Transparency has increased as 100 per cent of tender notices are published on the eprocure.gov.bd website and briefly in the press, he said.

The CPTU director general said mow there is no limit in terms of value for procurement through e-GP. Since its introduction, there has been procurement of goods and works (national) in e-GP.

He informed that the CPTU is going to introduce procurement of intellectual and professional services and international tender in e-GP.

Electronic Contract Management System (e-CMS) in e-GP has also been developed and it is ready for piloting, he said.

"The electronic procurement system introduced by CPTU of IMED, Ministry of Planning, has drawn appreciation at home and abroad." Noor said mentioning that Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Zambia and Ethiopia have already visited the system at CPTU.

In April 2019, a nine-member government team from Ethiopia came to CPTU and received four-day training on e-GP operation.

Up to Thursday (July 4), more than 60,000 tenderers are registered with the system he informed. A total of 46 banks have MoUs with CPTU for receiving payments under e-GP, he said, noting about 0.3 million tenders have been invited through e-GP and the total value of those is Tk 2.98 trillion (Tk 2 lakh 98 thousand crore).

It is very heartening that the Roads and Highways Department has won twice the South Asia Procurement Innovation Awards for its Tenderers' Data Base and Document Archiving system in connection with e-GP, he said.

It is expected that e-GP will significantly contribute to government's Vision for Building a Digital Bangladesh by 2021 he further said.

Dwelling on the growing importance of public procurement, Noor said government now spends about 18 billion US dollars on public procurement which is more than 75 per cent of the Annual Development Programme (ADP).

The current ADP is about 23 billion US dollars under the national budget of 58 billion US dollars, he added.