Planning minister M A Mannanon Wednesday urged all government officials, especially those engaged in public procurement, for discharging their role sincerely by maintaining transparency and accountability. Public procurement means spending money collected from public and for this all concerned should be sincere to ensure better use of people’s money from their patriotic feelings in order to boost economic growth, he mentioned.
The minister was speaking as the chief guest at a workshop on “How Senior Government Officials Can Support Achieving Value for Money Outcomes in Procurement” at Radisson Blu Dhaka Water Garden.
Abul Mansur Md. Faizullah, ndc, Secretary, Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) and Ms. Mercy MiyangTembon, Country Director for Bangladesh & Bhutan, World Bank spoke at the workshop as special guests.
Richard Olowo, Lead Procurement Specialist, World Bank and Sunil K. Bhattacharya, Consultant, World Bank, also spoke on the occasion. Shish Haider Chowdhury, Director (Coordination and Training), CPTU, IMED chaired the programme.
Public procurement is very significant in Bangladesh as the government spends 45 per cent of the national budget and of this fund. About 75 per cent of ADP which is about 16 billion dollars is spent onpublic procurement.
Speakers mentioned that optimum use of public investment and timely and quality service delivery depend on how well public procurement system functions. Recognizing the importance of public procurement, the government of Bangladesh has been implementing systemic reforms, it was told mentioning these reforms include electronic government procurement (e-GP) that has helped improve delivery of public services. This reformalso increased efficiency, transparency and competition leading to an annual savings 150 million dollars, an amountenough to build 1500 km of rural roads or 3000 primary schools in Bangladesh.
