Bangladesh making transformational shift to digital procurement Over 55,000 tenders valued US$5.8 billion done in e-GP

DHAKA, June 9 (NsNewsWire) — Bangladesh is making transformational shift to its public procurement environment with exponential growth of electronic government procurement, known as e-GP, covering four key government agencies: Roads and Highways Department, Local Government Engineering Department, Bangladesh Rural Electrification Board, and Bangladesh Water Development Board. These agencies together spend about half the country’s annual development budget. The agencies are also monitoring procurement performance online.

In the last two years, the tender invitations through e-GP in these four agencies increased by seven times. The agencies together invited over 55,000 tenders online up to May 2016, up from 8,000 in June 2014, the corresponding value increase is to US$5 billion from US$700 million in the same period.

In addition to making public contracting more accessible, secure, efficient and transparent, the electronic procurement is significantly reducing collusive bidding practices at the local levels. e-GP has made doing business easier, and reduced the transaction costs for both the procuring agencies and the bidding community. In addition, the system is becoming self-sustainable with its own generated revues. The World Bank supports the Government in implementing e-GP through the Public Procurement Reform Project II (PPRPII).

The project facilitated developing professionalization of procurement in the country. 60 public officials have been certified as national trainers. 89 personnel received the ‘blue color’ international procurement accreditation following a rigorous screening and qualification process at the UK-based Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (MCIPS), and 84 officials received a Master’s in procurement. The project also facilitated three-week procurement training to about 2400 officials from the four key agencies covering over 1000 procuring entities, and over 1900 officials from 20 additional agencies with over 500 procuring entities,  ensuring that over 85 percent of procuring entities have at least one three-week trained staff.  Moreover, over 5000 participated in 17 types of short courses.

The project also piloted public procurement monitoring through citizen’s engagement to ensure better value of money, and transparency and accountability at the grass root level. The project also facilitated a government-contractors forum, and public-private stakeholders committee (PPSC) with representatives from the ministries, the procurement entities, and the leading think-tanks.

A joint World Bank – Government team recently reviewed the project progress and noted the Government’s high commitment, contributing to more transparency and competitiveness of the public procurement system. The World Bank also noted that to keep up pace with the fast growth of e-GP, the Central Procurement Technical Unit needs strengthening further in terms of capacity and e-GP as a business service provider. To keep pace with the high demand of e-GP from the procurement entities, the project is helping replace an existing data center with a new state-of-art data center with expected storage capacity increase by about 180 and set up a mirror site with the same capacity.

The World Bank’s total support to the project is $68.10 million, which includes a $10million additional financing to project approved on June 6, 2016.