The number of women tenderers registered with the electronic Government Procurement (e-GP) system has stood at 3,388 in the country right now, according to Mohammed Shoheler Rahman Chowdhury, chief executive officer of the newly-established Bangladesh Public Procurement Authority (BPPA).

He shared the information at a workshop on citizen engagement in public procurement with women tenderers at the BPPA conference room in Dhaka on Sunday, according to a press release.

About 30 women representatives of various business chambers, women entrepreneurs and women tenderers participated in the workshop organised by BPPA under the Digitising Implementation and Public Procurement Project (DIMAPPP).

The BPPA has been implementing the project with support from the World Bank and the Dnet, a consulting firm engaged by BPPPA in managing the citizen portal, facilitated the workshop.

Abul Kashem Md Mohiuddin, secretary of the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED), attended the workshop as chief guest.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina inaugurated the e-GP portal on June 2, of 2011, in a bid to digitise public procurement in Bangladesh.

Up to December 17 of 2023, a total of 761,146 tenders were invited through e-GP involving a total estimated cost of TK792,664 crore.

The government earns revenue worth about Tk 400 crore a year through the e-GP system.

Currently, about 40 per cent of the national budget and 80 per cent of the Annual Development Programme (ADP) are spent on public procurement.

Total annual expenditures on public procurement are worth about 30 billion US dollars a year.

Public procurement is done with public funds and that is why citizens have rights to know about public procurement. To fulfill the rights, BPPA has established the Citizen Portal.

For further improvement of the overall procurement management and establishing a sustainable procurement environment in the country, the government has recently transformed the Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU) of IMED into Bangladesh Public Procurement Authority (BPPA).