An evaluation of risk mitigation strategies through prohibiting corruption, fraudulent, coercion and collusive practices in public procurement act, 2006 : a study on directorate of primary education

Abstract

The risks in the public procurement simply means the events that make the procurement process jeopardized and or the benefits of the public procurement are not achieved adhering to true to the processes of activities as stated in the Government’s Procurement Legal Framework/ Policy. In Bangladesh country perspective the public procurement risks originated from the activities not properly maintained by the Procurement Entities (PE) as stated in the PPA, 2006, the Government’s Procurement Legal Framework for public procurement. Some potential risks may occur in the public procurement activities either from the activities of corruption or Fraudulent or Collusive and Coercion (CFCC) practices by the involved parties and or socioeconomic or sociopolitical conditions. There are many risks involved in every steps of the public procurement process as the whole nation has stake with it. The PPA, 2006 has included many of the tools as the strategic risk mitigation tools to mitigate the risks may arise in the implementation stages of the public procurement process by the PE’s operational activities. DPE’s operational activities of the procurement processes were evaluated in comparison to the strategic risk mitigation tools mentioned in the PPA, 2006 in the current study. A number of unwanted incidents which make paralyzed the public procurement process of DPE were evaluated in this research. Based on the PPA, 2006 and PPR, 2008 provisions which mitigate risks in the public procurement process were evaluated and recommended some activities which were the essence of the risk free procurement process for DPE, Development Partners and the government. DPE, being one of the largest government organizations in Bangladesh, has to procure different types of goods and services from national and international markets both from the suppliers and consulting firms. DPE has to follow the Public Procurement Act, 2006 and the Public Procurement Rules, 2008 for procurements using GoB fund. DPE also follow PPA, 2006 and PPR, 2008 for the different stages of procurement process which are not mentioned in the Development Partners (DPs) Procurement Guidelines. But after conducting this study it was found that there is room for DPE to improve the procurement process compliance with all of the procurement Guidelines which were recommended from this study. Possessing the necessary logistics for transforming the procurement processes from the current manual systems to the worldwide accepted electronic system, DPE should adopt e-GP for all its procurement processes. By transforming from the manual systems to the e-GP, DPE can ensure more transparency and efficiency in procurement process with the risks from Corruption, Fraudulent, Coercion and Collusive practices at a minimum level. DPE was strongly recommended from the current study to adopt e-GP with some other recommendations for operational compliance with the strategic risk mitigation tools mentioned in the PPA, 2006.