Govt to approve purchases electronically
The government is set to give out approvals for purchases over Tk 50 crore and consultancy services valued at upwards of Tk 10 crore in digitised format to cut down the time lag and corruption.
“In few days we will stop sending files manually to the honourable prime minister. She will electronically view the files and give approval on them,” Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal said on Tuesday.
Kamal has already sent a proposal in this regard to Finance Minister AMA Muhith. At present, the line ministries send the proposals to the cabinet committee on purchase.
After that, a meeting is called provided that all members of the committee remain available in Dhaka, and in the meeting the committee members discuss the proposal at length.
Then the committee, which is led by the finance minister, give the nod to the proposal in principle.
The proposal is then sent to the prime minister for final approval.
The whole process takes at least a month and has been blamed for the delays in implementation of projects.
The planning minister in his letter said the proposals will be sent online and all members of the committee will log in to the site and give their opinions there.
The finance minister will review the opinions of all committee members online and recommend to the prime minister for final approval. The prime minister will log in to the site and view it online and give the final approval.
The Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU) will take the initiative as part of digitisation of all sections.
Established under the planning ministry in 2011, a major task of the unit is to do the government purchase process electronically and make the public procurement process transparent and accountable.
Zahid Hussain, lead economist of the World Bank's Dhaka office, said the new system will be helpful in decreasing red tape and increasing the efficiency of government procurement.
The efficiency gains will be huge if the government purchasing process is done electronically, he said. Potentially, it should also reduce the corruption in the procurement process, he added.
After the establishment of CPTU, 96 directorates of 24 ministries have been brought under the electronic government purchase system (e-GP).
At present, 1,894 procuring entities of various directorates have been conducting their purchase activities through the e-GP.
As a result, 15,332 tender bidders have registered with CPTU.
Besides, 1,686 branches of 37 banks have linked themselves with the e-GP.
Some 25,665 tenders have been called under e-GP and 15,980 tenders completed successfully, according to an official of the planning ministry.
The activities of CPTU have increased so much that another data centre is being set up, he said. All the government purchases could be done under e-GP when the second data centre is up and running.
Since the volume of work under CPTU will increase, a separate ministry for it will have to be established, whose name will likely be the Government Purchase ministry, he added.