A special mission of World Bank and CPTU on the assessment of Bangladesh public procurement system started on 22 July 2018 at CPTU.

The mission will conclude on 2 August 2018. The kick-off meeting was presided over by DG, CPTU and Additional Secretary Md Faruque Hossain. Ishtiak Siddique, Senior Procurement Specialist is leading the WB mission. Dr Zafrul Islam, Lead Procurement Specialist and Peter-Armin Trepte, Lead Legal Procurement Consultant of World Bank, representatives of agencies involved in the assessment process and CPTU officials were present in the meeting.

The mission members of the WB are holding meetings and discussions with CPTU and agencies under an agreed schedule up to August 2, 2018. The process will be followed up by production of a report.

They will also meet Secretary, IME Division and C&AG, CGA and Additional Secretary, ERD.

Meetings and discussions are also scheduled with development partners like ADB and JICA, national procurement trainers, Review Panel, Government-Tenderers Forum, Dhaka, tenderers and TIB during the period.

The agencies involved in the assessment process are LGED, BWDB, BREB, RHD, PPPA, CGA, C&AG, ACC, MoH &FW, CMSD and DPE.

The objective of the assessment is to see where the existing public procurement system in Bangladesh stands now and what needs to be done to improve the situation.

The Central Procurement Technical Unit and the World Bank have jointly undertaken the task to be accomplished through MAPS meaning Methodology for Assessing Procurement Systems.

MAPS is a globally accepted tool to assess public procurement systems in their entirety. It is universal and can be used by all countries regardless of income level or development status.