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The Financial Express
July 4, 2010
Shafiul Alam
It is really amazing to see how stakeholders of any process look, talk and exchange their ideas, experiences, and complaints in a single platform. If the process involves varying interests and is governed by a new law, it generates more discussions and debates to arrive at a consensus. Because lack of appropriate information and understanding on the subject in some cases creates confusions among them at the operation level.
Such a scenario was evident at the first five future search conferences (FSCs) meant for advocacy campaign on public procurement held in Narsingdi, Munshiganj and Narayanganj, Manikganj and Gazipur districts recently. The deputy commissioners of the districts facilitated the holding of the FSCs that brought the government procuring entities, contractors, administration, civil society and media across the table at the local level. The Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU) of IME Division under the Ministry of Planning is getting such advocacy campaign done by the Bangladesh Center for Communication Programs (BCCP).
The FSCs are aimed at creating awareness about the importance of public procurement and necessity of compliance with the Public procurement Act and the Public procurement Rules by the stakeholders. The main stakeholders in public procurement are the procuring entities of the government and the contractors, suppliers and consultants. The civil society and the media have also a great role in the process as they work as the watchdog of government spending for the welfare of the people. Public procurement accounts for about 75 per cent of development spending each year. There is no denying the fact that such a bulk spending from public funds requires to be governed by a uniform law.
The government put in force the PPA and the PPR to ensure efficiency, transparency, fair competition and value for money in procuring goods, works and services in the public sector since January 31 in 2008. Since the PPR is new and the subject is not all along easy, various activities have been undertaken by the government to make it operational. These include capacity building, monitoring, e-government procurement and awareness campaign under its Public Procurement Reform Project-II supported by the World Bank.
The FSCs as designed under the PPRP-II will be held in all 64 districts of the country. The first five FSCs are held on a pilot basis. The rest, along with a mass media campaign and capacity building, will be held under a communication strategy on public procurement.
Procurement experts, communication team of CPTU and BCCP, and the stakeholders at the district level numbering over 50 sit at the FSCs since morning to afternoon. All the stakeholders take part in the discussions, presentations, group work, question and answer, past experiences, present situation analysis, future searching and an action plan on what to do to establish a well-functioning public procurement system in the country.
The contractors in most cases raised the issues of security money and the extent of performance guarantee. This point was clarified by the experts. They demanded that the language of the schedules in the PPR should be easy Bangla. The procuring entities pointed out that they need all updated documents in hand for proper tendering process. They also mentioned the issue of "syndication" among the tenderers that hampers the quality of work.
In many cases, the tenderers cannot submit the bid documents properly due to lack of their understanding, they noted, saying training for the contractors on PPR has become urgent. The media people came up with their main complaint that they are not provided necessary information on procurement by the entities at the time of their needs. The civil society expressed their anger over the tender grabbing and other anomalies in procurement activities at the field level. They expressed their happiness over some development activities done in time and as per the rules. Such timely completion of work has benefited the local community. The civil society and the media pointed out that goodwill on the part of the government is a sine qua non for improving governance in public procurement. The main issues that have come up for discussion include tender security, performance guarantee, lottery, negotiation, e-tendering, front loading, experience of bidders etc.
The writer can be reached at Shafiul_1966@yahoo.com |
