The Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) on Monday started the stakeholder’s sensitization workshop on the draft review of standard bidding and contracting documents used in the procurement of goods, works and services.
Mr Mamman Ahmadu,the Director General of Buearu of Public Procurement, in a two day workshop held in Port Harcourt, said that the aim was to ensure that the procurement document already in use by world bank is a standard bidding document that meets the international best practices.
Ahmadu represented by Engr Eze Obasi, the Director Department of Special Procurement,said that the workshop would create an opportunity to harvest valuable inputs from all public procurement stakeholders.
Ahmadu said the development of new procurement documents and the revision of the existing procurement documents aimed at addressing the inadequacies observed in ministries, departments and Agencies in the use of the current document.
According to him,the stakeholders engagement will be taking place in four locations nationwide to receive inputs and reactions from the public procurement’s takeholders.
“The review workshop takes place in four locations, Lagos, Kano, Rivers and Abuja starting with South-South and Southeast,
“The essence is to ensure transparency, openness and accountability and to bring our standard practice to current trend in ICT and other developments,” he said.
He said that the workshop discussion will bring out the key clauses of interests, synergise various perspectives, incorporate them in the documents being reviewed and developed.
Ahmadu said that the review when properly used by agencies will help in the improvement of budget implementation and national development.
In his remark, Mr Aliyu Aliyu, the Director of Regulation Data Base and ICT, said that the review of Bureau of public procurement will be done from the regulators perspective and not to be reinvented totally but to get information from various clients who have done it before.
Aliyu said there will be triple addition of more information on the already existing standard bidding document to cover some areas that were not covered in the before now.
According to him, some professional bodies said that they need some documents that covers their area of work, and as such,we want document that governs us in doing business with government to avoid people drafting documents to their liking.
“We should have a reference documents that properly address those areas to which we want to contact.
“Having standard bidding document that covers a lot of areas will assist us from people that drag us to arbitration in UK, Paris, among others asking us to pay $9.8 billion dollars because these bidding documents are not used by contractors.
