From Tony John, Port Harcourt
The Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) has started the stakeholder’s sensitisation workshop on the draft review of standard bidding documents used in the procurement of goods, works and services.
The Director General of the Bureau of Public Procurement, Mr Mamman Ahmadu, disclosed this in a two-day workshop held in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
Ahmadu represented by Mr 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.
He said that the stakeholders’ engagement would be taking place in four locations nationwide to receive inputs and reactions from the public procurement stakeholders.
“The review workshop takes place in four locations, Lagos, Kano, Rivers and Abuja starting with South-South and South East.
“The essence is to ensure transparency, openness and accountability and to bring our standard practice to the current trend in ICT and other developments,” he stated.
He said that the workshop discussion will bring out the key clauses of interest, synergise various perspectives, and incorporate them into 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, the Director of Regulation Data Base and ICT, Mr Aliyu Aliyu, said that the review of the Bureau of Public Procurement would be done from the regulators’ perspective and not be reinvented totally, but to get information from various clients who have done it before.
Aliyu said there would be triple addition of more information on the already existing standard bidding document to cover some areas that were not covered before now.
According to him, some professional bodies said that they need some documents that cover their area of work, and as such, we want a document that governs us in doing business with the government to avoid people drafting documents to their liking.
“We should have 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, and Paris, among others, asking us to pay $9.8 billion because these bidding documents are not used by contractors.
“Standard bidding document as it entails best practices in the world means everybody will come together to draft a document from the perspective of citizens, contractors, sub-contractors, technical, philosophical and psychological all involved because it will control the relationship between parties.”
Aliyu said that though the act has given the Agency the power to create the standard bidding document, it still has to be done by the people in other to achieve the success of the contracts by the parties knowing their rights and responsibilities.