Finance Minister directs BPPA to lessen public procurement lead time further
Finance Minister Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury addresses a meeting at the BPPA conference room on Thursday. Photo: Collected.
Finance and Planning Minister Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury has directed the Bangladesh Public Procurement Authority (BPPA) to take effective measures to further lessen procurement lead times for government purchases.
He issued the directive while chairing the fourth meeting of the BPPA Board of Directors at the authority's conference room in Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, Dhaka, on Thursday. The meeting was attended by State Minister for Planning Jonaed Abdur Rahim Saki, Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) Secretary Sirajun Noor Chowdhury, and other board members.
During the meeting, the finance minister praised BPPA's institutional development and ongoing reforms in the public procurement system.
He said that the introduction of the Electronic Government Procurement (e-GP) system and various reform initiatives undertaken by the BPPA have reduced the average procurement lead time from nearly 100 days to 54 days.
"However, to accelerate project implementation further, procurement lead times must be reduced even more," he said.
The minister noted that delays in project implementation are hampering the government's development activities.
"If public procurement can be completed more quickly while ensuring efficiency, competition, and transparency, the pace of project implementation will increase significantly. At the same time, the benefits of development will reach the people more quickly," he added.
