Director General (Additional Secretary) of CPTU Mr. Mohammed Shoheler Rahman Chowdhury made a keynote speech on the electronic government procurement (e-GP) system at a virtual knowledge exchange sharing session of the East Africa Public Procurement Sub-regional Network on 11 March 2021.

Bangladesh is leading South Asia and beyond in e-GP implementation. The East African countries are now at different stages of e-GP implementation. They expressed interest in knowing and learning from the experiences of Bangladesh.

With this objective in view, the World Bank facilitated the session.  

APPN Chair Mr. Madoda Mngomezulu, APPN Technical Secretary Mr. Aftar Toure MOROE, and Sub-regional Network Coordinator and Chairperson of the session Ms. Pauline OPIYO made the opening remarks in the virtual session titled, “Electronic Government Procurement- Current Status, Opportunities and Challenges.”

Mr. Woldeab made country presentation for Ethiopia. It can be mentioned here that from 18 March to 21 March 2019 a 9-member Ethiopian team received e-GP training from CPTU.

Others who made country presentations in the virtual knowledge sharing session included Mr. Richard MIGAMBI of Rwanda and Mr Leonard KAPANGO of Tanzania.

The DG CPTU in his presentation touched upon various aspects of the Bangladesh e-GP system. He mentioned that significant improvement has been made in public procurement governance by dint of e-GP. Transparency, efficiency and competition have remarkably increased in Bangladesh’s public procurement.

The CPTU piloted e-GP in 2011 and started implementation in 2012. In 2007, 15 per cent of the contract awards were published while it rose to 100 per cent in 2021. Only 10 per cent of the contracts were awarded within the initial bid validity period in 2007 and in 2021 it stood at 99.67 per cent.

Average number of participation per invitation in 2007 was at 3 while it rose to 19.4 in 2021.

There was a detailed question-answer and discussion in the virtual knowledge exchange sharing session. The World Bank representatives also joined the virtual session which the participants said was a very useful dialogue in the domain of public procurement.  There are public procurement networks in South Asia, Europe, MENA-OECD, and East, South, West Africa etc.