Challenges of public procurement in Bangladesh: a case study on Roads and Highways (RHD)

Abstract

Challenges affecting public procurement performance has been attracting attention from procurement conceiving scholars, practitioners, academicians and researchers due to impoverished performance resulting from non-affinity to precise processes and procedures and significant other activities. Roads and Highways Department has sought out to ensure fair and equitable process of public procurement. The purport of this thesis is to provide more effective understanding of why and how RHD faces challenges on account of limitation of policies and bureaucratization. Public procurement performance has been affected by as some of the key challenges i.e. grandiloquent policies, procurement process, financial delegation of power, lack of accurate knowledge of policies, ethics and stakeholder management, frequent procurement. Legislations to regulate public procurement process in RHD have been implemented, through enactment of the Public Procurement Act (2006) and Public Procurement Rules (2008). The main results show that selection of appropriate contract is exhibited to poor ranking wherein existing policies are nagging challenges in some areas. Traditional practices public procurement is to foster extensive use of numerous tender activities schedule while record keeping system is neglected by offsetting the public procurement performance. Finally, some recommendation for simplifying rules, more circumscribed management discretion, and a vigorous but ethical and legal review of procurement decision is addressed.