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Bangladesh,United States : BANGLADESH gets funds from WORLD BANK to overhaul public procurement system
Publish Date : 29-Jul-2016
The Washington-headquartered World Bank has committed $10m in funding to Bangladesh to help it upgrade and expand its public procurement system.
The World Bank has so far provided $68.1m in cash to Bangladesh to support its procurement project, including the latest one.
The Asian nation will use the newly received funds to change a data centre, which is not capable to maintain speed with the increasing demand from public procurement entities.
The global donor has stated that it will ascertain for the proper use of the public funds and ensure better transparency in the procurement system.
The Acting World Bank Country Director for Bangladesh Rajashree Paralkar has asserted that Bangladeshs efforts to enhance its procurement system have started showing results and it has positioned the same along the lines of global standards via digitization method.
The official added, Results are visible in the economy, efficiency and transparency of the system that ensures better value for money.
He has further said that the additional resources will also help the country to improve its overall investment environment and speed up the poverty alleviation moves.
The additional money will also help in maintaining support to professional certification and training on public procurement, which has already mandated at least one trained staff member for more than 85% of major procuring bodies.
In 2011, the project was launched in the country. It puts attention to implement electronic procurement and online performance monitoring systems in four public procuring bodies covering transport, local government, water and power, which jointly comprises about 50% of the annual development budget of Bangladesh. The number of public sector entities registered in the system since then has grown fast to reach the level of around 200 now.
Additional Secretary, Economic Relations Division, Government of Bangladesh, Kazi Shofiqul Azam has revealed that the website created as part of the project has facilitated the base for a robust system to control procurement, as well as procurement laws and related documents.
According to him, this has led to the reduction in transaction costs with major cuts in the tender processing time, which has reduced to 29 days in 2015 from 51 days in 2012.
The official added, With additional financing, a data centre with increased capacity will enable other public sector agencies to access the platform.
