On February 4, 2018, the Honorable Minister for Shipping, Shajahan Khan, visited the Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU) of Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED), Ministry of Planning.

The Minister discussed the issue of procurement of dredging and maintenance work of Payra Port with Director General of CPTU and Additional Secretary Md. Faruque Hossain. The DG, CPTU also briefed him about CPTU functions. Md. Abdus Samad, Secretary and Bhola Nath Dey, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Shipping, and CPTU officials were present during the meeting. The planned Payra Port is located in Patuakhali, a coastal district to the south of Bangladesh. The government has taken up the project to build a port there to reduce pressure on the existing Chittagong and Mongla Ports. The CPTU is a nodal office of IMED. It is assigned with the responsibilities of carrying out regulatory functions of public procurement as per the Public Procurement Act 2006 and the Public Procurement Rules 2008. Under the law, CPTU has been implementing electronic government procurement (e-GP) in the country since 2011 to make the process more transparent, dynamic and hassle-free.

Until 4 February, 1208 out of 1300 procuring agencies were connected to e-GP. The number of tenders invited through e-GP up to February 4, 2018 was 146386 and their total value was 1 lakh 33 thousand 992 crore taka. The number of tenderers registered with e-GP system the same time is 41815. All such figures are increasing every-day.  A 24/7 Help Desk with call number 16575 is working at CPTU for tenderers, procuring entities and banks.