The Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) has said that only procurement and contract tenders with the unified procurement documents would be approved in 2023. This, is as BPP is putting finishing touches to the unified documents to be used for contract bidding and procurement by government Ministries, Department and Agencies, MDAs.

The Director General, BPP, Mamman Ahmadu diaclosed this yesterday at a three-day stakeholders workshop on the development and revision of Public Procurement and Standard biddng documents in Abuja.

Ahmadu said the unified process which has been long over due has become necessary so as ensure competitiveness in the country’s procurement process.

Ahmadu, who was represented by Babatunde Kuye, Director, Energy Infrastructure said any procurement that is not processed using the new documents will not be approved by BPP. He stressed that gone are those days where every MDAs operate using different documents for procurement. He therefore warned that in 2023 BPP will not allow contract agreements to be done in disregard of the tender documents.

“Not until now, the government officials in MDAs have been using severally their own editions of documents and some are not standard documents and most don’t. So we don’t have a unified document, so each MDAs does its own. What we are saying is this, by the time we approve this one, all agencies of the federal government who are doing their procurement will have no choice but to adopt this tender bidding documents as their tender documents. Tender document that will be issued to contractors will be uniform based on these bidding documents. They are about 13 or 14 in number depending on the type of procurement,” he explained.

Kuye also noted that the Secretary to the Government of the Federation had issued circular that it would be insisting on 100 percent adoption in 2023. Besides, he said the BPP will not allow contract document.

“Once we issue these tender documents, it will form the bulk of contract documents and agreements. Gone are the days where legal officers will start the process of contract documentation, disregarding the tender documents,” he insisted.

The gains of the proposed documents, he said is to bring the country’s procurement process up to date with international best practices in terms of international acceptance. Secondly, he said it will take care of process that were not covered in the previous documents, like small projects, large and complex projects. He said it will also cover the use of technology.

“The new process will bring the country at par with any other procurement process anywhere in the world. It would seal any kind of leakage in the procurement process as it is all about transparency, competition, value for money, prevention of corruption and but most importantly, to also domesticate this new introduction in Nigeria so that there can be a lot more local content and our people who are serious, who always want to partake in federal government contracts will find it very easy going forward,” Ahmadu said.

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