LAHORE: The agriculture department launched its e-procurement system here on Tuesday for, what the officials say, ensuring 100pc compliance with Punjab Procurement Regularity Authority (PPRA) rules, making monitoring and evaluation more effective while drastically cutting the time required for the procedure.

Sheikh Afzaal Raza, the department’s procurement adviser who developed the Procurement Management Information System (PMIS), says the capacity gaps and poor understanding of the PPRA rules have been leading to non-compliance, audit objections and allegations of misappropriation on the part of procuring entities. The PMIS dashboard, templates and controlled data flow would eliminate these complaints and improve monitoring and evaluation of the procurement process, he adds, claiming the user-friendly information and communications technology tool will cut at least 60 work hours consumed in the procurement documentation procedure to less than 30 minutes.

Agriculture Secretary Wasif Khurshid hopes the PMIS will improve financial planning, performance, fairness, transparency, accountability and service delivery in public procurement, making it fully compliant with provincial rules and reducing procurement cycle time and associated administrative costs.

Published in Dawn, July 4th, 2018