Challenges of procurement: a case study of BEZA

Abstract

As we know that the Bangladesh Economic Zones Authority under Prime Minister’s Office is one of the leading investment promotion agencies in the south and south-east Asia. To meet the demand of investor’s especially ready land & connectivity and utilities e.g. power, gas and water, BEZA needs to handle lots of procurement every day. BEZA also needs to procure PPP Developer and G2G developer for developing, operating and finance EZs, CETP, STP and Solid Waste Management. This study aims to identify the current scenario of procurement management, progress of procurement, the challenges of procurement and the possible barriers of implementing procurement in Bangladesh. Bangladesh Economic Zones Authority (BEZA), a an autonomous organization, has been chosen as scope of the research since it follows procurement guidelines of Government of Bangladesh and all of development partners under their financed projects. In this study, I have tried my best to present the procurement progress and its challenges in BEZA for developing EZs. There are 5 separate chapters in this study. In the chapter 1, I have discussed about BEZA and its functions. In the chapter 2, I have discussed about procurement progress of BEZA including its project with the using of primary survey and secondary surveys. In the chapter 3, I have discussed about sustainable procurement and BEZA involvement. In the chapter 4, I have analysed the details challenges of BEZA in procurement and in the chapter 5, I have provided specific recommendations to improve the procurement efficiency. In order to complete the analysis, BEZA officials, procurement experts and project directors of different project under BEZA have been interviewed, and some BEZA employees and some bidders have been surveyed. They were asked to provide their opinions on current status of public procurement, which challenges they find in public procurement, which changes they expect in public sector procurement, and what they think about the changes in future for improvement the procurement matters. After finding their opinions, data analysis has been completed using analytical tools. This has been found that BEZA has already an existing capacity of procurement management, but in order to ensure efficiency in procurement, focusing on enhancing capacity and improving cross-functional coordination should be considered with more importance. According to experts, this is essential now to put more emphasis on financial allocation and strategic coordinated effort for procurement capacity development in order to extract the genuine essence of strategic procurement in public procurement of Bangladesh Findings of this study would be useful to procurement practitioners mostly in public procuring entities and BEZA officials.