Digital bidding hits milestone

The government's electronic procurement volume hit the milestone of one lakh last week in what can be deemed a major encouragement for the efforts to establish transparency and accountability in public purchases.

As of yesterday, a total of 100,392 tenders were floated and 61,288 -- involving Tk 43,828.45 crore -- awarded electronically, according to the Central Procurement Technical Unit website.

The system got a mention in Finance Minister AMA Muhith's budget speech for fiscal 2018-19, in which he presented it as one of the successes of the government's digitisation process.

“About half of the electronic government procurement (e-GP) is currently being done through the system,” said Md Mofizul Islam, secretary of the implementation, monitoring and evaluation division (IMED) under the planning ministry.

Muhith is expecting that up to 80 percent of the public procurement tenders would be done through the e-GP in the near future.

To bring all the tenders under the electronic system, the IMED is organising a host of training programmes for both the government officials and bidders.

Of the 1,233 government divisions and organisations, 1,103 have already adopted the process for their purchasing.

Currently, around 300 tenders are floated every working day, and the number will be upwards of 500 when the system is adopted across the board, Islam said.

Anyone can submit tender of up to Tk 100 crore on the e-GP system while sitting anywhere.

Some 38,890 tenders were floated for fiscal 2016-17 and 2,205 already for next fiscal year.

“This system helps to remove corruption in tender submission process,” Islam added.

The e-GP system was developed in 2011 by local software firm Dohatec New Media. The system was launched with fiscal 2012-13's government procurement.

After the success with e-GP, Dohatec is now building a similar system for Bhutan.

Luna Shamsuddoha, chairman of Dohatec New Media, said it was their pride to become a part of such a process that is bringing accountability to government purchases.

“Definitely it helps bring transparency and increase inclusivity and it will improve furthermore in future,” said Luna who won the 16th Bangladesh Business Awards given by DHL and The Daily Star in the Outstanding Woman in Business category.