Aiming at building 'Smart Bangladesh' under the Vision 2041, the government is working to ensure sustainable development as part of the 8th Five Year Plan and the Perspective Plan.

For this, all concerned must maintain maximum transparency and accountability while conducting public procurement to ensure the best use of public money.

Mirza Ashfaqur Rahman, Director (Additional Secretary), Bangladesh Public Procurement Authority (BPPA), Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Department (IMED), Ministry of Planning, made such observations.

He was speaking as the chief guest at an awareness workshop on BPPA’s functions and e-GP in Netrakona on May 16, 2024 (Thursday).

Rafiquzzaman, Additional Deputy Commissioner (General) of Netrokona, presided over the workshop. The workshop was organized under the Digitizing Implementation Monitoring and Public Procurement Project (DIMAPP) of BPPA. Bangladesh Center for Communication Programs (BCCP) facilitated it.

The workshop was attended by representatives of procuring entities, tenderers and journalists. Dr. Zeenat Sultana, Program Director and Deputy CEO, BCCP, was present at the programme.

Mirza Ashfaqur Rahman said public procurement system has been digitized through implementation of electronic Government Procurement (e-GP), that has resulted in widespread increase in the use of the system. For this, currently about 70 per cent of total public procurement is conducted through e-GP.

Describing the progress of e-GP, he said, through the e-GP system, the average processing time of public procurement has come down to 57 days from 87.7 days. At present, 100% of tender notification and contract award notices are being published in the e-GP system.

He said, the use of the e-GP system saves 600 million US dollars every year. Besides, 105 crore 30 lakh pages of paper so far have been saved by e-GP which has reduced 1.54 lakh tonnes of carbon emissions. Contract management in public procurement is also done through the e-GP system, he added.

Noting that the progress of e-GP in Bangladesh has been widely appreciated across the world, he said, representatives of eleven countries and five international and foreign organizations have visited BPPA to know about the success of the e-GP system. The system has also received four international ISO certificates.