Project directors in the public sector need to have clear understanding and knowledge on the issues of public procurement, said Abul Mansur Md Faizullah, ndc, Secretary, Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) under the Ministry of Planning.

The Secretary underscored the importance of having proper knowledge in public procurement while speaking as the Chief Guest at a certificate giving ceremony of a training of trainers’ course for the national procurement trainers on the concluding day on 7 July 2019 at a city hotel.

The Secretary in his speech said, “In project implementation often we stumble in procurement. Therefore, project directors need some orientation on public procurement.”

The Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU) of the IMED organized the training in cooperation with ITCILO, a consulting firm engaged by CPTU in capacity development and professionalization under Digitizing Implementation Monitoring and Public Procurement Project (DIMAPPP). The CPTU has been implementing DIMAPPP since 1 July 2017.  

Additional Secretary and Director General of CPTU Md. Ali Noor and Programme Director of ITCILO Andreas Klemmer were present as the Special Guests while Team Leader of ITCILO Richard Lorenz chaired the concluding session of the 4-day ToT course. It had started on 2 July 2019.

The DG CPTU expressed the hope that the TOT had been helpful and useful for the national procurement trainers in updating their knowledge base and acquiring new techniques for providing training to government procurement officers.

There are 59 national procurement trainers in the country now, he mentioned. The DG further said that CPTU under DIMAPPP would organize more orientations for them. About 8 thousand officers will be trained in public procurement under courses of various durations.

Director (Training and Coordination) Shish Haider Chowdhury, who is also the Component Director for capacity development and professionalization, delivered the thanks-giving speech in the programme. The DIMAPPP has four components.

From among 20 participating trainers, Shohelur Rahman Chowdhury and Sonia Nowrin, spoke on the occasion expressing their positive experiences and feelings about the ToT.    

Expressing the importance of public procurement in proper implementation of various projects under ADP the Secretary said the value and volume of public procurement is increasing every year. In the current fiscal the total value of public procurement under ADP is expected to stand at 18 billion US dollars. The size of the current ADP is about 25 billion dollars. About 75 per cent of ADP allocation is spent on public procurement. The national budget of the current fiscal year of 2019-20 is about 58 billion dollars.

The Secretary gave away certificates among the national procurement trainers at the end of the concluding ceremony