FG moves to sanitise procurement process via price checker

• Goes after 85,000 millionaire tax defaulters
The Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) has deployed a price checker and an electronic medium to check the manifest irregularities in procuring materials in public service.

Noting that it had begun the sensitisation of key procurement staff in ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), the agency clarified that while the checker was to unify prices, the e-solution is to guard against nepotism and favoritism by reducing physical interactions and contacts between contractors and officials during selection and supply.

The Head, Regulation and Database, BPP, Aliyu Aliyu, yesterday in Abuja confirmed that the initiative, conceived some three years in alliance with the Efficiency Unit of the Federal Ministry of Finance, was to achieve value for money through cutting down on waste and duplication rampant in the polity.

He said the portal was to allow vendors of non-customised goods upload their prices to allow for a more transparent procurement process.

Aliyu said: “This is to ensure that government at all levels does not spend money on excessively priced items. This way, we all have an idea what the prices are and when we publish procurement records, we can check if a ministry, department or agency (MDA) bought it (or them) for a price that was higher than what was posted on the portal. It is to bring about more transparency and bring the market closer to the people.”

He added that a number of states had shown interest in the project.

According to him, the portal is consistent with the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS).

However, the Executive Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Tunde Fowler, has said his organisation would sustain the chase on 85,000 wealthy tax defaulters in collaboration with the police and other stakeholders.

He spoke while receiving the Acting Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar Adamu, in his office yesterday in Abuja.

Fowler told his visitor that the service had realised N23 billion and still has over 45,000 tax defaulters, each having over N 100 million in their accounts.