KATHMANDU, July 19: The government has made the public procurement process opaque. The government has made a policy not to publish information in the public media at a time when there are accusations that big development projects are given to certain companies in collusion with builders. This will increase opaqueness in public procurement.

The government issued the 'Legal Provisions for Electronic Procurement -2080' and provided that in case of bidding through electronic procurement, any information related to the tender procurement process should not be published by any other means.

Under the Public Procurement Act, the government used to publish notices in newspapers under the public media when inviting bids for services from any company. The new system will be placed on the website operated by the relevant office and public procurement monitoring office. When the notice of tender is published in a newspaper, the notice reaches the general public. When information reaches everyone, it increases competition and accountability.

In order to make the procurement activities done through the electronic procurement more transparent, the system manager can create and publish a list of publishable data, details or documents related to the procurement process for everyone's access, but the stakeholders said that this will increase the opacity.

There has been opposition saying that the government introduced such a policy without discussing it with stakeholders. Som Prasad Dhital, the president of Advertising Association of Nepal, said that the government is going to make the public procurement process opaque by secretly publishing the information without publishing it in mass media.

"There has been an effort to keep information secret because of the need to increase transparency in a democracy," Dhital said. He said that the procedures issued by the government should be abolished and the notices regarding the tenders should be published in newspapers.

He says corruption will increase if there is no access to information. Tulsi Sitaula, a former secretary of Government of Nepal, says that it is better to go digital gradually rather than all at once, as citizens are not used to seeing websites.

"The government may have introduced a new arrangement for cost reduction," he said. "It is better to go gradually rather than all at once." Officials of the Public Procurement Monitoring Office did not want to be contacted on this matter, despite repeated attempts by Republica.

 
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