PPRA lacks powers to take action on violation of PP rules: DG

Pakistan Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) on Wednesday acknowledged that it lacks powers to take action on violation of Public Procurement (PP) rules. Public Procurements (PP) rules violations increased in 2012-13 as compared to the preceding financial year 2011-12 in the country. The PPRA uploaded 26,121 tenders of 677 organisations on its website in 2012-13 where the PP rules were violated in 5,721 cases ie 21.9 per cent against 24,104 tenders uploaded in 2011-12 where rules were violated in 2,506 cases ie 10.4 per cent.
This was stated by Alam Zeb Khan, Director General PPRA while giving the country presentation at the 2nd South Asia Public Procurement Conference "Moving from Compliance to Performance", jointly organised by Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA), World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB).
The DG PPRA said that the Authority was facing several challenges including shortage of human resource, capacity building of human capital, lack of power to take action on the PP rules violations and budgetary constraints. He further said that there was urgent need for procurement reforms in Pakistan. Talking about the PP legal framework of Pakistan, the DG said, "The PPRA Ordinance, 2002 and the Public procurement Rules, 2004 are applicable to all procuring agencies of the Federal Government. Open competitive bidding is the principle/default method of procurement. All procurements above the minimum threshold of Rs 100,000 (about US $1000) are advertised," he maintained.
He further said that uploading of the PP Rules Violations on PPRA website started in May 2012. The compliance of the PP Rules had increased from 1% in May 2012 to 10% at the moment. The procurement plans of 205 Procurement Agencies had been uploaded during the current financial year as against 9 last year, he added.
He said that the training of the government officials in procurement started in 2006 under a three-year World Bank Capacity Building Project. In 2009, the PPRA training activities were formalised through the establishment of National Institute of Procurement (NIP). Presently, the PPRA was imparting training through its own resources, he added.
He further said that under the reforms agenda of the PPRA, the preparation of National Procurement Strategy 2013-16 is finalised, besides the revision and improvement of Public Procurement Rules, 2004.
Citing the World Bank (WB) report, the DG PPRA said that rules and regulations were outdated while the public procurement suffered from inefficiency, and poor management. The Authority had inadequately trained and poorly paid public sector procurement professional, he said, adding that the bank had recommended enacting a public procurement law based on UNCITRAL Model Law; creating a small, professionally staffed, independent regulatory agency, the regulatory body to be mainly confined to policy, documentation, development of rules, etc and it should not involve in the clearance functions for award of contracts.