Under the new arrangement, which is being pushed as a part of governance reform program, officials the new office would receive the requirements of all government offices and make purchases for them at one go. [break]This will make procurement economical, assure quality of goods being purchased and also ensure timely availability of all necessary items that the government agencies need for delivering services smoothly, said a Ministry of Finance (MoF) official.
"We have already received consent from the Ministry of General Administration (MoGA) to establish the new procurement entity," stated Shishir Kumar Dhungana, joint secretary and chief of Administration Division at MoF, involved in the process.
He told Republica that following the MoGA´s nod, MoF is presently working out the structure of the new entity and its operations modality, particularly on how the demand of all the government agencies could be streamlined and placed on time.
"Our belief is; it can perform more effectively if it is placed and monitored under the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers. But no decision has been taken in this regard," said Dhungana.
Prime Minister Dr Baburam Bhattarai had proposed establishing the CPO mainly as there exists no uniform need assessment and procurement process in the government machinery.
Though types of goods and services that government office need is fairly similar, presently all the government offices from top (Ministry) to bottom (smallest office unit) are carrying out procurements independently. In this process, they repeatedly need to spend huge money while complying with the processes laid down by procurement law such as publishing of tender notices.
Apart from money, the offices also need to repeat all the processes such as benchmarking the quality and standard, evaluation of tender documents and selection of supplier, among others. These have been consuming time, resulting in variation in pricing and causing a mismatch in quality of same items received by different agencies.
"Every year multiple government agencies are procuring vehicles or photo copier or computers or furniture and file and folders in different quantity. If we centralize procurement, we can get all the items with one tender notice and through a single process. This will save time and money," said Dhungana. "Most importantly, it will assure that the standard of goods or services received will remain uniform," he added.
More than procedural hassles, officials believe it will also help plug anomalies and corruption involved in the process, which presently is prevalent in each and every government offices.
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