FinMin must take lead for making procurement more transparent: CCI

The public procurement process is,however,vulnerable to various kinds of unfair,anti-competitive practices like bid rigging or collusive bidding and a raft of government departments has been losing thousands of crores of public money. CCI has decided to suo motu take action and “sensitise procurement officials and field officers and maybe train them for procurement so that public money saved is put to better use,” an official source told The Indian Express.

The source said the officials would be asked to better design tender documents leaving no scope for anti-competitive practices. Besides,the bidding process itself needed to be made more competitive since procurement by the government sets a price benchmark for many goods and services. “Public procurement accounts for about 30 per cent of its GDP,” said the source.