By Emma Ujah, Abuja Bureau Chief
ABUJA—THE Bureau of Public Procurement, BPP, has upgraded its National Database of Contractors, Consultants and Service Providers (ND-CCSP), in line with the Ease of Doing Business Executive Order 01.

Emeka Ezeh,

An e-Government document released by the organisation in Abuja weekend, indicated that the initiative would make government contracts more competitive and save time in procurement process.

This initiative, the agency said, was to meet the provisions of the Procurement Act, 2007.  Section 5(h) of the Act mandates the BPP to maintain a national database of particulars, classification and categorization of federal contractors and service providers, which is the first Module of the e-GP (Government Procurement) system.

According to the document, “the system helps in verifying the credibility and competence of contractors, consultants and service providers, CCSPs, doing or intending to do business with Federal Government of Nigeria.

”It also helps in categorising and classifying consultants, contractors and service providers based on their capability.

“In the spirit of the principles of the Executive Order-01, i.e. One-Government and ease of doing business, the BPP in collaboration with Corporate Affairs Commission, Federal Inland Revenue Service, National Pension Commission, Industrial Training Fund and Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund has upgraded the ND-CCSP database to ensure compliance by Contractors and Consultants through real-time integration and exchange of data among the Government Agencies.”

The BPP said that the database would facilitate specialisation and professionalism of contractors, consultants and all service providers, while improving productivity and effectiveness of doing business with the federal government.

Two other initiatives of the BPP which would change federal government procurement processes, according to the document were the Nigeria Open Contracting Portal (NOCOPO) and the Price Checker Portal.

It said that NOCOPO would open up public procurement in Nigeria through increased disclosure of procurement information to all stakeholders with a view to ensuring improved transparency and competition, prevent corruption, enhance active citizen participation towards achieving better service delivery and improved ease of doing business in Nigeria.

The BPP said:  “This NOCOPO portal, was co-created with Civil Society Organizations in fulfillment of Commitment 2 of the Nigeria National Action Plan (NAP) of the Open Government Partnership which is ‘full implementation of Open Contracting and adoption of Open Contracting Data Standard in the public sector.’

“The NOCOPO will integrate with the entire e-GP components to ensure effective disclosure of procurement information and stakeholders’ engagement.

“The NOCOPO portal also ensure procurement information are proactively published in compliance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and the government’s commitment to implementation of open contracting in the National Action Plan of the Open Government Partnership, OGP.”

The price checker is a web-based application portal that was conceived and developed by the Bureau of Public Procurement in collaboration with the Efficiency Unit of the Federal Ministry of Finance.

In the past, Audits revealed that Ministries Departments and Agencies procures same common items at different prices.

According to the BPP, “the price checker will be a scalable and sustainable system that would address the business needs of getting real time information on the price range of non-customized goods from a central repository.

“Various vendors of non-customized goods will be required to upload prices of their various products on a continuous basis in order to be available for viewing by Accounting officers, Procurement Officers and Approving Officers in various MDAs. This will ensure uniformity of prices of non-customized goods in all MDAs and will further reduce wastage and cost of governance.”