World Bank supports and strengthens Bangladesh’ e-procurement efforts

The World Bank supports the Bangladesh government to scale up its electronic procurement system to meet higher demand for more effective and efficient use of public funds.

• A new data centre with 200 terra-byte storage capacity will be set up with an additional financing of $10 million that the global agency approved in Washington.
• A mirror site will also be installed to replace an existing lower capacity data centre to keep pace with exponential growth in demand for electronic procurement from public procurement entities.
• The new center will offer storage for 8.6 million tenders and support about 325,000 registered bidders, with robust security features and 180 times more capacity.

In 2011, the project rolled out electronic procurement and online performance monitoring systems in four public procuring entities, which cover transport, local government, water, and power and together spend about half the country’s annual development budget.

• Known as e-Gp, electronic government procurement has reduced tender processing time from 51 days in 2012 to 29 days in 2015, the release said.
• The number of registered bidders grew 35-fold, to 18,000 over the same period.
• Since August 2015, Bangladesh has processed more than 32,000 government tenders online at a total value of about $3.7 billion.

Qimiao Fan, World Bank country director:
“Since 2002, we have been helping Bangladesh bring systemic changes in public procurement, as a well-functioning system can ensure value-for-money, support fair competition in the private sector, and optimise execution of the national budget. We are happy to see how quickly the bidder community, even at the local level, has embraced electronic procurement. We are also helping create procurement professionals in the country.”

The financing will also help the project continue professional certification and training on public procurement. It has helped 89 officials to receive member status and professional diplomas at the UK-based Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply, while 84 have completed master’s degrees in procurement. The project has facilitated training on public procurement for about 2,700 participants, ensuring that over 85 per cent of procuring entities have at least one trained staff.

Zafrul Islam, WB team leader for the project:
“Public procurement was a complex, lengthy process only a few years ago. The shift to digitization and a focus on capacity development have allowed a new way of doing business. E-Gp has also reduced transaction costs for both the procuring entity and the bidding community. The new data center will be able to support nationwide e-GP implementation for all public procuring entities.”

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