Graft eats away 5pc of public buying budget
Staff Correspondent
Corruption eats up 10-15 per cent of the country's $3 billion public procurement budget, leading to the loss of scarce resources and the deterioration the investment climate, World Bank and ADB officials told a seminar yesterday."Pervasive rent-seeking and corruption produce kick-backs, ranging between 10 and 15 percent," said ADB representative Peter L Peterson at a National Seminar on the Public Procurement Regulations 2003. Speaking at the inaugural session, Acting World Bank head Muhinder S Mudahar said over the years the public procurement system suffered from opaque procurement practices, a lack of transparency and inadequate accountibility mechanisms, including rent-seeking practices. "This situation leads to wasteful use of scarce public resources, domestic or borrowed. At a more fundamental level, it causes erosion of public confidence and adversely affects the national investment climate," he observed. The success of the reforms in public procurement depends not only on the government's political will but also on support from the employees, Mudahar added. The Central Procurement Technical Unit of the Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) of the Ministry of Planning organised the seminar at the Bangladesh Institute of Administration Management Foundation. IMED Secretary Manik Lal Somaddar chaired the inaugural session. State Minister for Finance and Planning Anwarul Kabir Talukder attended the seminar as special guest. Speaking at the seminar, Anwarul Kabir Talukder said the time has come to fight unitedly against corruption. "Corruption will reduce if there is a combined effort," he said. The state minister termed the formulation of the public procurement regulation a major reform, adding that it was done in a relatively short time. In his speech, Peterson said good practices reduce costs and produce timely results; poor practices lead to waste and delays and are often the cause of allegations of corruption and misuse of public resources. According to some estimates, the economic losses due to corruption slows GDP growth by two to three percentage points a year, he told the audience. The ADB views the Public Procurement Regulations 2003 as a major breakthrough for transparency and accountibility in the procurement process and a major step in the harmonisation of procedures by development partners, he added.
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