KARACHI, April 12 Around 160 tenders for supply of goods and provision of services to various provincial government departments are being “corrected” every month, it has been learnt.

According to highly-placed sources, the Sindh Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (SPPRA) was closely scrutinising, on a daily basis, tenders being published by the government.

And, they said, it immediately approached the department concerned if it found out that advertisements were not in conformity with the government's procurement rules, and then the departments were bound to reissue the entire advertisements or if the mistake was minor publish a corrigendum.

The sources said that the federal government, on the advice of international donors - the World Bank, Asian Development Bank etc - and international watchdog agencies like Transparency International, had adopted the Public Procurement Regulatory Rules many years ago and the provinces adopted these rules to make their spending transparent.

They said that the recently formed Sindh Public Procurement Regulatory Authority was also scheduled to give a presentation regarding its rules to the cabinet, after which it would be tabled in the assembly and later rules would be framed and by the beginning of the next financial year — July 2009 — all spending would be done by strictly following the SPPRA rules and guidelines.

Responding to Dawn's queries SPPRA director Khaqan Murtaza said that the authority had conducted training workshops for officials in nine districts of the province to update them on new rules.

He said that the rules were simple and most of the time it was because of ignorance that they were not followed.

He said that the SPPRA closely monitored government advertisements in newspapers on a daily basis and approached the department concerned if any irregularity was found, to get it corrected.

He said that on average the SPPRA wrote around 160 letters a month to various government departments regarding irregularities in the tendering process.

He said that SPPRA rules guaranteed transparency and open competition among all stakeholders and it opposed pre-qualification of companies and discouraged the usage of “emergency clause” while making purchases by departments.

He said that while these rules put restrictions on one hand, on the other these also provided relaxations as well.

He said under the earlier rules for spending up to a certain amount, three quotations were required before giving any contract; under the new rules it was not strictly necessary.

He said that while the NWFP was leading in following these new rules, Sindh was in the second position, while Punjab and Balochistan were trailing behind in updating their rules to bring these in conformity with the new rules.

He said that the government had to adopt the new rules soon, as after some time all funding coming from international donors had to be spent in accordance with these rules.

He said that the Sindh Assembly's Public Accounts Committee, which was going through the auditor-general's report, had also sought input from the SPPRA on spending done by the departments and had taken action according to the recommendations of the SPPRA.

He said that the SPPRA team, which was headed by managing director Rizwan Ahmed, comprised Farasat Iqbal and himself as directors besides three procurement specialists — Naveed Channa (services), Ali Imam Qadri (goods) and Mohammad Arab Shaikh (works) — and some supporting staff.