What are the core principles of the Public Procurement Act?
The core principles of the Public Procurement Act, 2063, as outlined in its preamble, are designed to ensure that the process of acquiring goods, works, and services by public entities is conducted in a fair and efficient manner.
The key principles and objectives include:
- Transparency and Openness: Making procurement procedures, processes, and decisions more open and transparent to the public.
- Objectivity and Reliability: Ensuring that procurement actions are based on objective criteria and are reliable.
- Competition and Fairness: Promoting healthy competition among qualified bidders and ensuring fairness (cleanliness) throughout the process.
- Honesty and Accountability: Upholding high standards of integrity and ensuring that public officials are accountable for procurement decisions.
- Economy and Rationality: Conducting procurement in an economical and rational manner to achieve the maximum return (value for money) on public expenditure.
- Non-Discrimination and Equal Opportunity: Ensuring that all eligible producers, sellers, suppliers, contractors, or service providers have an equal opportunity to participate in procurement processes without any discrimination.
- Good Governance: Ultimately, these principles aim to guarantee good governance by enhancing the management capacity of public entities in procurement.
The Act mandates that any procurement conducted by a public entity must follow the procedures established within it to remain valid; any procurement done in contradiction to these rules is considered null and void