80pc of public procurement comes under e-G

The electronic government procurement (e-GP) till date witnessed an exponential growth since its introduction in 2011 to conduct public procurement online as about 80 percent of country's total public procurement up to the value of Taka 100 crore have come under e-GP till December 2017, reports BSS.

“The reason behind such a growth is accepted by private sector tenderers and government procuring entities because they wanted a system in tendering process which will be free from any physical obstruction, influence and hassles," said Md Faruque Hossain, Director General of Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU) of Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) under the Ministry of Planning.

While talking to the BSS, he said: “The e-GP success has earned accolade at home and abroad. Bangladesh is in a leading position in e-GP implementation in South Asia and beyond."

The CPTU introduced e-GP in 2011 in order to conduct public procurement more efficiently with enhanced transparency and accountability.

Upon inauguration of the e-GP portal hosted at www.eprocure.gov.bd by the Prime Minister on June 2, 2011, tender through online was first invited on August 23, 2011. On January 25, 2011 e-GP Guidelines was issued in line with the Public Procurement Act-2006 and Public Procurement Rules-2008.

The e-GP system was rolled out in 2012 to four large agencies such as Local Government Engineering Department (LGED), Bangladesh Rural Electrification Board (BREB), Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB) and Roads and Highways Department (RHD).

The agencies have implemented e-GP 100 percent up to the value of Taka 100 crore. Since 2012, e-GP growth started skyrocketing and it was implemented in other government procuring agencies.

In all, e-GP coverage is 40 per cent of total volume of public procurement. It is growing fast. In 2017, CPTU took up another project titled, "Digitizing Implementation Monitoring and Public Procurement Project (DIMAPPP)" in association with World Bank for full implementation of e-GP.

Actions to achieve the SDG target of 12.7 are; i) procurement process using e-GP and (ii) usage of PPR in public procurement. The lead division responsible for this is IMED.

Statistics showed up to December 2017, about 1200 out of a total of 1300 procuring agencies were connected to e-GP system. The number of tenderers registered with the system is now about 41,000.

Up to December 2017 from 2011, more than 1.35 tenders were invited through e-GP and their total value is over 1.24 lakh crore taka.

The e-GP system through tender document sales, registration and renewal has so far earned Taka 219 crore. A total of 45 banks are also connected to e-GP under MoUs as well as CPTU to collect payments both online and offline. For e-GP support 24 hours Help Desk is introduced at CPTU and it is also available at 16575.