Brigadier General Md. Munirul Islam. SGP, SUP, psc, PhD :
I am from a very humble, middle class family in Bangladesh. My parents were government service holder. My father was very much calculative in his life. He died in a very early stage of his life at 48 years. I can remember every day’s routine work of my father. At the end of each day (normally after dinner) he used to open a small notebook where he used to keep note for that day’s every expenditures for the family. Thus in every month he used to close his monthly expenditure and compare with previous month.
If the expenditure used to be more, then he used to discuss with my mother and took future steps jointly for the following month. I grew up in such family where every step was calculative. Since last 32 years, I am working as a Defense Procurement Specialist in Bangladesh Army. Almost in everywhere, I worked under good professionals. I used to give my opinion related to public money expenditure keeping eye ball to eye ball.
Though Defense Forces are exempted from Public Procurement Regulations (PPR), but I was very much keen about PPR-2008. Because my thesis in PhD was “Public Procurement in Bangladesh – A Study in the Health Sector”. For last 32 years, I dealt with defense procurement, carried out research work on public procurement.
Thus and experienced both sides of the coin. Now let’s see how the public procurement went on before formulating PPR. Previously different ministries used to conduct their own procurement based on manual, SOP or policy. There was no unified guideline.
All were mostly in fragmented form. There were Economic Relationship Division (ERD) Guidelines, Compiled General Financial Rules (CGFR), Public Works Department (PWD) code, Manual of Office Procedure (Purchase). There was no complete legal framework for unitize of public money.
It caused unnecessary delay, less efficiency, less accountability and less transparency. In 2001, Country Procurement Assessment Report (CPAR) identified the weakness of the existing procurement process. Realizing the need for a change, in 2002 Government formed Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU) with support of WB.
Finance Minister, M. Saifur Rahman was a talented and smart finance minister in the history of Bangladesh who worked for free market, stabilizing the macro economic health of the country, introducing VAT, expansion of TAX net, banking reform, dragging down the government expenditure and ensuring best utilization of public money. Streamlining the public procurement and bringing all fragmented procurement process under one umbrella was his another unique example for the economy of Bangladesh.
Now let’s see how PPR got momentum and moved to its track. With the assistance of IDA, Public Procurement Reform Project (PPRP) was approved in February 2002. This project continued till 2006-07. In July 2006, Public Procurement Act (PPA)-2006 was passed in the Parliament. As the Act is the mother and Regulation are the child, so there was necessity to formulate Regulation on Public Procurement. As such Public Procurement Regulation (PPR)-2008 was public in 2008.
To strengthen the process technically, “Public Procurement Reform Project II (PPRM-II)” was established in 2007 and extended the time line twice. Lastly, it ended in June 2017. Again in August’2017, “Digitizing Implementation Monitoring and Public Procurement Project (DIMAPPP)” was signed between Bangladesh Government and IDA of WB. Total cost was USD 55 million for 05 years (2017-2022) duration. Additional financing was signed in 2022 and duration was extended up to December 2023.
Objective of this project was to improve public procurement performance through digitization, restructuring of CPTU into an authority, training of government officials and bidders, institutionalization of e-GP. On 18 September’ 2023, Bangladesh Public Procurement Authority (BPPA) Act published. Thus CPTU converted as BPPA.
CPTU, BIAM and other organizations started giving training on PPR since long. Till 2024, 73 certified National Procurement Trainers are in the BPDA trainer’s pool. Under this project total 3484 officers received 03 weeks training from 2019-2023, 4333 participants revived short course training, 12,520 participants received 3 week training since 2003-2023. In the same time 15,241 participants received short training, 25 government officials obtained MSC and 52 trainers obtained short training from ITC-ILO. Turin University, Italy.
I can recollect that in 2008, I obtained 04 days training from BUET on Public Procurement in Army expenses and did my PhD from Jahangir Nagar University at my own. Reform of Public Procurement is ongoing for last 25 years, lot of government officers are trained utilizing public money, a no of bidders are trained too.
What is the positive impact of this reform? Tender time from invitation till contract sign is reduced. In FY 2012, it was 86.7 days and in 2024 it is 53 days. Due to Open Tendering in e-GP, no of participants are increased. In 2007, the total participants on an average were 03 against each tender which increased to 20.24 in 2024. Paper savings is approximately 1053 million pages. In previous manual method, bidder had to come and drop the tender to the box. It encouraged few to obstruct other’s tender drop using muscle power, creating chaos in law and order.
But will this positive impact keep us sit tight? No, still there is plenty of scope for improvement in our PPR. Even after winning the world cup, one club/nation don’t sit idle thinking that they don’t need any improvement. They plan for future development. Still we have corruption, collusion, bid rigging, leakage of sensitive information, lack of accountably in our public procurement system.
There are many rules which need further improvement. We can think about Direct Procurement Method (DPM), siting experience for the firms, fixing yearly turnover of the tenders, disqualifying a firm for quoting price which is 10 percent less or more than that of estimated price, if there is tie in price thus experience in the same organization gets preference, too much dependency on foreign consultants, international firms get preferences, in case of foreign loan conditions are more favorable to the foreign firms, scope to reduce lead time, preparation of more transparent technical specification etc. In this further development of PPR, BPPA may take active role. Our reform started before 25 years.
By now huge projects are completed. Lot many training session both home and abroad have been completed. For further improvement our experts need to be involved instead of foreign one. We have our own culture and heritage. We should make rules based on our hundred year’s age old tradition instead of following the foreign one as copy and paste.
In the very beginning, I was quoting my late father’s example. Because it was his hard earing money. I also learnt about patience and good financial management from one of my best friends and guide in my life who happens to be a teacher in BUET. I am grateful to both of them. Same way, we the all government servants dealing public procurement must handle public money with honesty, sincerity, cautiously and carefully. We must think that this public money has the share of rich to poor of this country. The more we are calculative and logical in use, the more the nation will get development and improvement in our public procurement system commonly known as PPR.
(Brigadier General Munir is a procurement specialist, completed PhD on “Public Procurement in Bangladesh” from Jahangirnagar University.
He can be reached in [email protected])
