The planning minister disagrees on a proposal made by the finance minister for creating a separate division to do government procurement activities, which usually involve billions of funds, officials said.
Finance Minister AMA Muhith recently sent the proposal through demi-official letter to the Ministry of Public Administration (MoPA) to set up an individual division for government purchase.
The MoPA forwarded the proposal to Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal. The planning minister on November 22 expressed his disagreement over the finance's proposition.
"You have expressed your opinion about creating a separate government purchase division under the finance ministry. I am politely disagreeing on your thought. I believe that we need to think more before creating such a division," Mr Kamal said in a letter of dissent.
Having received the letter, the finance minister said, "I want a report in this connection. Creating a separate department is inevitable to carry out the activities of government purchase."
Experts do have their own say over this tug-of-war.
It, they say, will be a duplicate agency if launched finally in the country and will create extra expenditure for the state. Additionally, it may be manned by some inexperienced people, which may lead to inept dealing with such import matter like public purchases.
They suggest government should utilize the existing system and experienced people for more dynamic, transparent government purchase activities.
"Like other state-owned losing concerns, it will also be a failed organisation," fears one of them, wishing not to be named.
The finance authorities, however, underpinned their arguments for floating the proposed purchase division by citing some massive advances in the economy that involve big purchases.
The country's economy is rapidly developing. Between 2004 and 2014, average GDP growth was 6.0 per cent. The economy is increasingly being led by different government purchasing works, export-oriented industrialisation and the like.
For this reason, an individual division under the ministry on procurement works of the government is needed now to implement procurement plans/programmes properly.
"So, the move is time-befitting," said an official of the finance division.
Another finance ministry official said that, currently, the government agencies do their respective procurement jobs on their own in accordance with the existing rules of business.
"So, there is little scope for creation of any separate entity for procurement without changing the present allocation of business and rules of business," he said about the procedural factors.
Presently, e-tendering, e-purchase and so are catchphrases in a digital transition related to government function and financial matters.
National e-Government Procurement (e-GP) portal (i.e. https://www.eprocure.gov.bd) is operated by the Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU) under the IME Division of the Ministry of Planning. The e-GP system provides an online platform to carry out the procurement activities by the Public Agencies - Procuring Agencies (PAs) and Procuring Entities (PEs).
The e-GP system is a single web portal from where and through which PAs and PEs can perform their procurement-related activities using a dedicated secure web-based dashboard, planning officials said.
This complete e-GP solution introduced under the Public Procurement Reform (PPR) recipe is being supported by the World Bank and gradually used by all government organizations.
This online platform also means to help them in ensuring equal access to the bidders/tenderers and also ensure efficiency, transparency and accountability in the public-procurement process, they said.
rezamumu@gmail.com