Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) has been able to save billions of rupees to the government, which otherwise, would have been wasted due to mal-practices in tendering.
Managing Director PPRA, Muhammad Khalid Javed said the authority has been able to enforce procurement rules, which has streamlined tendering procedures and government ads, which were passed on to favourites. It has also given confidence to bidders and provided them a fair chance of participation in the process.
The authority, which is meant for regulating public procurements and tenders is gaining strength and has been able to enact its regulating framework with full force. However, draft of same regulations is available on the web site of the Authority, which is yet to be fine-tuned.
PPRA role is to regulate and monitor transparency in procurement cycle of public sector agencies. It does not interfere in their management, he added. The monitoring of procurement has improved the working of the government departments, which has saved substantial revenue on account of fair bidding process.
He said, earlier huge funds of government and donor agencies were going waste due to non-transparent procurements and obliging those bidders aligned with the government officials. PPRA has put an end to most of such activities, he maintained.
Quoting some examples of manipulation, he said once an advertisement was published in a daily newspaper, whose circulation was limited to only 20,000 copies in Lahore. The bidding party purchased the whole lot on the day of advertisement according to a plan and took away the chance from other bidders, who could not get a clue of the exclusive ad.
Khalid Javed said now all the public sector entities are bound to route their ads through web site of PPRA as a rule and it scrutinises all ads. There are over 150 organisations, who have directly uploaded their tenders on our site. He stated that we scrutinise all the ads and advice the government agencies about any discrepancy and 5000-6000 letters were issued to the public sector for rectification during each quarter, he added. He appreciated the Prime Minister and the government for their support to strengthen the authority.
Answering about the reaction of stakeholders on establishing of this department, he said most of the sellers are happy and quite relieved, whereas the government departments are not comfortable, as they have no free hand in the deal and have to follow the prescribed procedures, he added.
He stated that in the new procurement regulatory framework, for the first time bidders have been given the right to ask for a copy of evaluation report, if they were not successful in the bid. Earlier, they were completely blind of the bidding and had no right to make any representation, he added. He said, PPRA has made a rule that all tender and procurement advertisements of Rs 2 million and above must be published in the newspaper.
Regarding training and upgradation of skills of staff, he said their department is carrying out workshops and offering regular courses to its staff as well as the professionals of procuring agencies.
Khalid Javed said that PPRA was established at the behest of World Bank, who was of the view that a large amount of funds were going waste due to misuse of powers and corruption at all levels. Procurement is 15-20 percent of the GDP of Pakistan and an improvement of only 15 percent would save 3 billion dollar to the government, which is more than total commitments of external assistance, he added.
He said Pakistan's ranking in the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) of Transparency International (TI) is beyond 140 among 163 countries. Government is making all efforts to improve the image and in this endeavour constituting lot of regulatory bodies. These authorities, he said have started showing some results, he added.
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