Speakers at a dialogue on 1 December 2019 underscored the need for creating an enabling environment in public procurement system for ensuring participation of women to make the system sustainable for better implementation of development projects.

For this, it is a dire need to bring necessary policy changes to create an enabling environment where women entrepreneurs can largely participate in public procurement.

They were speaking at a policy dialogue on ‘Engaging Women Entrepreneurs in Public Procurement’ held at the conference room of the Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU) of the Implementation Monitoring Evaluation Division (IMED) of the Planning Ministry.

Women entrepreneurs present in the dialogue demanded certain threshold for women to participate in public procurement. In sub-contracting women may be encouraged by procuring entities. Women can also be encouraged to vie for LTM tenders. Somehow some policy liberalization for the women entrepreneurs is required as this segment of the population is still far behind the male counter-parts not because of inability of women but because of social realities, they observed.

The Business Initiative Leading Development (BUILD) organised the dialogue in association with the International Trade Centre.

Nurul Amin, Secretary, Planning Division, Ministry of Planning, spoke at the programme as the chief guest while Md. Ali Noor,Director General (Additional Secretary) of the CPTU, spoke as special guest.

Luna Shamsuddoha, Chairman of Dohatec New Media spoke as guest of honour. Ferdous Ara Begum, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of BUILD chaired the dialogue. Mehruna Islam, Gender Consultant of BUILD, made the keynote presentation.

Secretary said, Hon’rable Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in a recent ECNEC meeting gave necessary directives to simplify the policy on public procurement so that participation of women increases in the process.

“Women’s participation in public procurement can encourage corruption-free tendering system and boost development programmes,” he said.

Prime minister is also working to ensure access to finance for women and she is also sincere to bring down bank interest rates to single digit.

Md. Ali Noor assured the women entrepreneurs that the CPTU would positively consider necessary changes in the policy in order to increase the number of women entrepreneurs in public procurement.

He said, experience of private sector is not considered for government works because of the public procurement rules which are at par with international practices.

While presenting a keynote paper on the topic, Mehruna Islam Chowdhury, Gender Consultant of BUILD, pointed out major challenges and drawbacks in the policy for which the participation of women entrepreneurs in the public procurement process is not increasing.

The ITC Country Coordinator Tanvir Ahmed said to develop women entrepreneurship the number of women workforce in various institutions and business houses should be increased.

If entrepreneurship among the womenfolk can be increased, the number of women participation in public procurement will increase. But some policy supports maybe necessary, he added.  

Women entrepreneurs demanded of the government initiative to ensure access of information to public procurement for women as it is urgently required for them. Besides, they demanded effective measures for creating awareness among women to overcome those challenges.

Mentioning that service sector needs more documentation, they said that media awareness and social mobilization is needed to provide necessary knowledge to women about public procurement.

“We need to have clear understanding on areas where the capacity building is needed the most. A database of women entrepreneurs may be maintained that will be helpful for orgsnizing women related trainings and programmes,” Mehruna Islam mentioned in the presentation.

Registration process that is required for participating through e-GP is a problem for women as it needs IT knowledge to some extent. Besides, there are problems related to trade licensing, access and procedures for getting bank loans. At the same time, lack of capacities and awareness is a major challenge for women.

Women’s participation in public procurement is required for ensuring equitable access of women entrepreneurs and enhancing women empowerment, diversification of the supply chain of goods, work and services, for development of SME sector, she mentioned.

She said, women are not aware of the differences in the documents required for tendering in case of goods, works, services as more documents are required, which is a major problem.

Women entrepreneurs do not have the capacity to develop business profile and documentations required for that and so training is required before registration as tenderer, speakers mentioned and demanded of the authority to take effective initiatives to arrange trainings for women.

Besides, they demanded launching of a mass media communication and awareness for encouraging women to participate in public procurement.

Considering that security issue is a concern, they demanded of the authority to make the e-tendering provision easier for women through amending the procurement policy.