Comprehensive reforms for procurement unlikely

A government exercise to draft a comprehensive public procurement policy has run aground. In what is seen as a bid to guard own domain, five members, all of the rank of secretaries to government, in the 11-member committee are set to append notes of dissent to the report.

The opposition to change is principally from secretaries in ministries that are the big spenders, railways and defence.

Following Congress party president Sonia Gandhi’s speech at her party’s plenary session here last year, where she spoke about streamlining government procurement to prevent corruption, a committee of retired and serving bureaucrats, headed by Vinod Dhall, ex-head of the Competition Commission of India, was tasked with revamping policy and draft new legislation for public procurement.
 

PANEL PROBLEM

• A government exercise to draft a comprehensive public procurement policy has run aground
• Five members, all of the rank of secretaries, are set to append notes of dissent
• Opposition to change is principally from secretaries in ministries that are the big spenders
• Most members felt there was no need to change procurement rules

 

The committee was given two extensions. It is now likely to present its report in the middle of this month, with half a dozen notes of dissent. The report will be given to the cabinet secretary who will then present it to the Group of Ministers on Corruption.

The committee was to have studied model procurement laws and guidelines of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law, the World Trade Organisation Agreement on Government Procurement and that of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, tailoring these to Indian conditions. It was to have drafted a national law, unified regulations, a centralised e-procurement portal, a bid-challenge framework and training for officers. The panel’s mandate was to ensure transparency, competition, value for money, and the same treatment to foreign and Indian firms in procurement.

But most members felt there was no need, in their respective ministries, to change procurement rules.

Some radical suggestions — for example that all defence procurement be done by the finance ministry — have been rejected.

“It is a discordant group of people, pulling in different directions,” said a member of the committee.

Another member said the ministry representatives’ views “were tantamount to hurting national interest to protect bureaucratic turf”.

“The scene in our meetings is similar to what happens in the well of the Lok Sabha” said a member, describing heated debate.

“The chairman, Vinod Dhall, is too much of a gentleman to handle the war,” said a member.