PPRA scrutinised 24,554 tender notices in 2020-21

ISLAMABAD: The Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) has scrutinized a total of 24,554 tender notices of public sector entities involving multi-billion rupees procurements and found 1,606 deviations from the public procurement rules during the last financial year 2020-21.

The PPRA monitors all the advertisements/tenders related to procurement on a real-time basis through its web portal, with a view to ensuring compliance with the Public Procurement Rules, 2004. During FY2020-21, a total of 24,554 tender notices of Public Sector Organizations were uploaded and monitored, wherein 1,606 deviations from the Public Procurement Rules, 2004 were pointed out to the concerned procurement agencies for taking remedial measures. It is claimed that the PPRA Rules compliance has been improved by approximately 12 percent in the last fiscal year.

In a bid to implement much-awaited e-procurement in Pakistan, the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) will kick-start a pilot project into a couple of ministries within the third quarter of the current fiscal year. The PPRA has developed standard bidding documents for procuring goods and services for different sectors.

The PPRA is making plans to reform public procurement regime to generate more value for money, transparency and strengthen accountability mechanism in public procurement.

The authority is implementing technology-oriented web-based e-Procurement Project titled as “e-Pak Acquisition and Disposal System”, in order to fully automate the public procurement process in Pakistan The E-Procurement (e-Pak Acquisition & Disposal) System (EPADS) is supported under the Public Financial Management System “Program for Results” (PforR) under the aegis of World Bank. The digitalization of procurement processes will eliminate the direct interface between procurement officials and bidders and thereby significantly reduce the chances of bribery and corruption.

A comprehensive RFP (Request for Proposal) document containing all the parameters of bidding documents for hiring the service provider was prepared by the authority itself, thus saving millions of rupees of public exchequer. Entire procurement process for hiring of service provider was completed in an efficient, transparent and competitive manner. In this regard, contract (amounting to Rs499,886,601 inclusive of all applicable taxes) was signed on 8th April 2021 with the successful bidder M/s Abacus Consulting (Pvt.) Limited. The scope of work includes designing, development, installation and commissioning of EPADS as well as three years post-commissioning maintenance and support. The contract has been operationalized from 7th May 2021 after fulfilling post contract legal and procedural formalities. Partial roll-out of the EPADS is likely to be implemented in selected ministries by June 2022, whereas, complete roll-out in the federal ministries is expected in the second quarter of next FY2022-23.

The Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA), Pakistan, is an autonomous body established under the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority Ordinance, 2002, and is empowered to take measures for improving governance, management, transparency, accountability and quality of public procurement in public sector organizations.