South Asia regional conference on public procurement in Dhaka Nov 1-3
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
 

Bangladesh is going to host the third South Asia Regional Public Procurement Conference in Dhaka on November 1-3.

Honourable Minister of Planning, AHM Mostafa Kamal, told the media about this during a press briefing after the ECNEC meeting on August 25, 2015, Tuesday. The Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU) of IME Division under the Ministry of Planning will arrange the conference.

A committee led by the Secretary of the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation (IME) Division, Md Shahid Ullah Khandaker, has been constituted to supervise arrangement for the conduct of the conference.

The main theme of the conference, following up on the theme of the Second Conference “Moving from Compliance to Performance”, will be “Innovation for Sustainable Performance”. Within the framework of this theme, the following topics will be deliberated upon:

Definition of Sound Public Procurement Performance, Procurement Workforce and Professionalization– Essential Performance Elements, Procurement Workforce and Professionalization– Essential Performance Elements, Electronic-Government Procurement (e-GP)- Reforming Procurement Environment and Boosting Performance, Innovative Tools and Methods for Performance Enhancement and Performance Measurement
The number of participants from each of the eight SAARC countries will be from two to six. About 35 participants are expected to be nominated by the GoB including civil society, academia, bidding community, and associations. In addition, about 8 to 10 donor representatives working in Bangladesh are also expected to participate in the conference.
The Current Chair of the Conference Coordination Team is Ms. Nazrat Bashir, Managing Director, Federal Procurement Regulatory Authority, Pakistan and the New Chair will be Md. Faruque Hossain, Director General, Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU), IMED, Ministry of Planning, Bangladesh.

Sponsored and facilitated by the World Bank and ADB, the heads of public procurement of the South Asian countries have been interacting with one another for sharing their knowledge and experiences in public procurement.

In April 2011 in Kathmandu, and in March 2014 in Islamabad, the heads of public procurement, along with other key public procurement policy/decision makers and representatives of oversight bodies, met in conferences. The main objective of these conferences was to provide public procurement policy/decision makers and other key stakeholders from each country a platform for exchange of knowledge and experiences and for networking.