An incoming procurement proclamation is undergoing massive changes to streamline with the digital route taken by government courtesy of the electronic government procurement (EGP) system.
This financial year, the Public Procurement and Property Authority (PPPA) has rolled out the EGP to 74 public offices with over 1080 tenders and purchases being published on the locally developed portal.
According to the plan, by the end of the budget year, about 490 billion birr worth of procurement will be undertaken through the EGP.
Leaders at PPPA remarked that despite the digital shift to EGP being new, the execution has been seamlessly adopted across the board in its first year of application.
The electronic procurement system was first piloted with selected nine public offices in the 2021/22 budget year and later expanded in the 2022/23 budget year. Currently, 74 public offices are undertaking their procurement through EGP.
“Of the total 74 public offices, 61 have become most effective in using the new system,” Woldeab Demissie, Deputy Director General of the Authority, said.
“We had limited the number of public offices to 74 to first prove the capability of the system. We will include others when we make sure the system stability is improved and have ample capacity in terms of providing support for offices that will be included on the system,” he explained.
Additional public offices will be included in the coming budget year and in the coming five years time all regions will be part of the portal.
“Except for few higher education institutions, all central government offices will be included on the system as from July, which is more effective with regards to accessibility which leads to attraction of more bidders than the manual scheme,” Woldeab said.
In the budget year, about 1,080 bid and pro-forma procurement were processed via the platform with over 138 contracts being awarded. So far over 8,000 suppliers including international suppliers have been registered.
At the beginning of the year, the number of suppliers was not more than one hundred, but that has since grown gradually.
Lack of awareness is stated as one of the challenges in expanding the number of suppliers. To this end, the authority with different stakeholders is working to draw attention to the new scheme.
The system also supports international tenders and so far, seven international bids have been issued on the portal.
“Experts from World Bank, who have assessed the new scheme, have appreciated our system and we have agreed that when the system stability is at top tier standards, the World Bank and other international partners’ procurements shall be procured, through the same,” said the Deputy Director General, adding, “They have given us some comments on the system. If we make the necessary updates as per the requirement, the World Bank and other international partners will undertake bids through our system.”
Lack of professionals on the sector was also stated as one of the challenge to which the PPPA has revealed it is designing a center of excellence to train experts on the sector.
In Ethiopia, up to 70 percent of the government budget is channeled to procurement.