World Bank approves $40m to greatly help Bangladesh increase insurance coverage of e-GP

Image: Collected
The World Lender on Saturday approved $40 million to help Bangladesh boost the coverage of electronic government procurement (e-GP) with new features to react to the COVID-19 challenges.

This additional financing to the Digitizing Implementation Monitoring and Public Procurement Project (DIMAPPP) will help expand e-GP to all or any public procuring entities.

With this additional funding, the World Bank's support to the project right now stands at $95 million.

To respond to the problems of COVID-19 pandemic and any other future emergencies, the financing can help add important features to the e-GP system, including international bidding, direct contracting, framework arrangement, electronic contract supervision and payment, procurement info analytics, geo-tagging, and other folks, according to a news release from World Bank.

"Bangladesh has made systematic changes to increase the consumer procurement environment, including digitizing the system. During the general getaway for the COVID-19 pandemic, e-GP enjoyed a crucial role in continuing production works throughout the country." said Mercy Tembon, Environment Bank nation director for Bangladesh and Bhutan.

He said that financing will help ensure 100 % usage of e-GP and upgrade the system to enable the country to keep ensuring timely and top quality public works and people service delivery. 
 
The financing can help strengthen the emergency procurement procedures and develop a roadmap for sustainable procurement. 
 
It will build provision to support the tiny and medium-sized and women-led enterprises and scaling-up citizen engagement in public procurement.

Since 2002, the Environment Bank has been supporting the government to boost public procurement. In 2012, with the Universe Bank's help, the federal government rolled out e-GP in four procuring entities. In fiscal year 2020-2021, US$17.5 billion worth of procurement contracts representing about 62 % of open public procurement expenditure in the united states were prepared through the e-GP system.

Through the pandemic, e-GP allowed over 1,300 open public organisations to process most procurement activities online pursuing national competitive procurement methods. The project has developed a net portal for residents to easily track data on general public procurement and provide responses. In 48 upazilas, citizen groups already are monitoring deal implementation, which is scaled up beneath the new financing.

The additional financing can help enhance the capacity of the e-GP info centre and improve cyber-security. It'll ensure country-huge roll-out of the electronic contract management and repayment module with the provision of uploading geo-tagged pictures, said the release.

"The digitization of open public procurement was a game-changer for both the public and personal sector. It helped to improve productivity and transparency and manufactured doing business less difficult," said Ishtiak Siddique, World Bank team innovator for the project.

To complete the ongoing and latest activities, the job is extended by one and one half years till 31 December, 2023. 
Source: https://en.prothomalo.com

Share this news on: