New Procurement Policy

 

Mr Dao Quang Thu, Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment, said MPI and the WB have cooperated in preparing Open Contracting (OC) Initiative for a long time, taking it as part of reform programme and transparency enhancement in bidding activities of countries in the world. Specifically, from March 16 to 19, 2015, the ministry worked with the WB to conduct a survey on OC Initiative at agencies and units engaged in bidding activities like the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Health, State Audit of Vietnam, the Electricity of Vietnam (EVN), Hanoi City Department of Planning and Investment, and the Vietnam Association of Construction Contractors. On April 10, 2015, the WB had an assessment report on the survey, in which included recommendations on necessary OC initiative contents in Vietnam. From May 18 to 21, 2015, the WB hosted a workshop on Asian OC Initiative where Vietnam also attended with representatives from the Certificate of Merit, the Ministry of Transport and the Vietnam Association of Construction Contractors. Through this workshop, the Vietnam delegation drafted an Action Plan on OC Initiative to be deployed in Vietnam until 2017. Currently, MPI and WB are working together on building and unifying the Action Plan and Progress of the OC Initiative in Vietnam until 2017.

 

He said the OC implementation in Vietnam is aimed at enhancing publicity of projects and contracts financed by State capital in consistency with the goal of improving competitiveness, fairness and transparency in procurement, mobilise the active participation of civil society organisations and professional organisations in the process of monitoring and supervising contracts so as to enhance the efficiency of state capital.

 

So far, Vietnam has provisions on disclosing bidding information. Specifically, Article 8, Clause 1 of the Law on Procurement stipulates that information must be publicly available on the national procurement network system such as plans for selection of contractors, opening invitation, invitation to qualifying ground, tender offer, shortlist, and result.

 

However, according to many experts, the above information only focuses on contractor selection phase, not contract deployment phase. To facilitate the monitoring and surveillance by stakeholders and the community, the information on contractor selection process to contract execution phase must be made public in a specific, detailed and systematic manner.

 

Mr Tran Dang Quang, Director of Procurement Division, MPI, introduced Vietnam’s action plan and vision to 2017, 2020 and 2025, and action plan to 2017. He underlined five main objectives of the vision: Perfecting mechanisms and policies on e-GP, public information disclosure and community supervision; Fully developing e-GP features on OC data (OCD); developing a full-featured monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system using a standard OCD format integrated with e-GP system; professionalising procurement operations for individuals and organisations directly involved in the bidding; and enabling stakeholders and citizens to access and use information available in the system for monitoring and evaluation and reflect on the bidder selection and contract implementation. The Action Plan to 2017 includes 14 activities and focuses on four key operations: Reviewing current e-GP system, reviewing the conformity with standard OCD and M&E formats, upgrading current e-GP system with the OCDS format, and building policy on M&E and tested M&E interface development.

 

World Bank Country Director for Vietnam Victoria Kwakwa highly appreciated Vietnam’s achievements in this effect. She said Vietnam has made progress in building a legal framework for procurement, including the Law on Procurement of 2013, Decree 63/2014/ND-CP detailing the implementation of some articles of the Law on Procurement specifying contractor selection.

After the success of the Law on Procurement 2013, Vietnam needs to further enhance accountability, transparency of information, and efficient use of State capital. Besides, Vietnam’s financial demand is rapidly growing while traditional resources, including ODA, have been depleted. In addition, Vietnam is also facing huge challenges in public debts. Therefore, more than ever, the effective use of public resources and finance is an urgent requirement for Vietnam. Particularly, enhancing transparency and strengthening accountability is very important. Moreover, the publicity of contract and the outcome of bidding processes which help reduce administrative procedures, shorten investor and contractor selection process, and facilitate community supervision, cross supervision of stakeholders also essential, said Victoria Kwakwa.