Finance Ministry is improving procurement standard together with ASEAN

BANGKOK, Nov 15 (TNA) -- The Comptroller-General’s Department is working with other Southeast Asian nations to introduce an ASEAN public procurement standard as e-bidding is cutting procurement costs by at least 30 billion baht a year. Finance Minister Apisak Tantivorawong told the ASEAN Public Procurement Knowledge Exchange (APPKE) Forum that in August the government introduced new public procurement regulations to effectively tackle corruption in public procurement projects and consequently cut procurement costs by 17-18%. He also said that e-bidding saved government budgets by at least 30 billion baht a year and in the past three years of e-bidding implementation the state saved about 90 billion baht. The minister also said that concerned officials were reducing median prices for public procurement projects by basing the prices on the actual prices of raw materials and records of past procurement contracts. He added that the government allowed state enterprises to introduce their own procurement regulations instead of the regulations set by the Comptroller-General’s Department to ensure their competitiveness against the private sector. Choonhajit Sangmai, advisor to the Comptroller-General’s Department, said the ASEAN Public Procurement Knowledge Exchange Forum set on Nov 15-16 would allow participants from ASEAN to exchange their experiences in public procurement and develop public procurement networks in order to cope with corruption and promote trade and business opportunities among ASEAN members. Thailand had improved its public procurement standard to a certain extent and was focusing on transparent procurement and fair competition, she said. (TNA)