TN: No ‘Centre of responsibility’ to co-ordinate and monitor the functions of the eProcurement portal, says CAG

Tamil Nadu government failed to make the procurement of goods and services only through eProcurement portal mandatory for all procuring entities in the State.

There was no ‘Centre of responsibility’ to co-ordinate and monitor the functions of the eProcurement portal despite a lapse of more than 15 years since its implementation.

This resulted in partial/non-utilisation of the eProcurement portal defeating the envisaged objective of transparency in the tender process, according to Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India Performance Audit on Implementation of eProcurement system in Tamil Nadu for the year 2023.

Government should come up with a comprehensive solution to address the technical and procedural shortcomings on priority. Government should issue orders to all the procuring entities to mandatorily use the eProcurement portal for all procurement activities.

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Procuring entities should update the tender stages in the eProcurement portal immediately on completion of every stage and the same should be monitored by the Nodal Officers of the department using the Management Information System reports available in the eProcurement portal.

Nodal officers of the procuring entities should ensure that the complete evaluation reports are uploaded to the eProcurement portal at the appropriate stages without fail and should ensure that all tenders are processed and finalised based on bid documents submitted through the eProcurement portal.

Government should fix responsibility for the diversion of EMD funds and bring in a mechanism so that offline payments are authorised by an authority higher than the publisher of the Tender. Government should speed up the process to implement the centralised open online workflow model of registration.

Government should chart out and implement a structured training programme for effective utilisation of the eProcurement portal by officials of procuring entities and should take steps to achieve improved bidder participation through help desk, hand holding and pre-bid meeting activities.

The State government while responding to the Audit observations raised, assured necessary corrective action wherever required. Government has also taken steps for procurement by public procuring entities of the Government of Tamil Nadu through the online eProcurement portal from April 1, 2023, the report said.

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