The Hindu Business Line : E-procurement: Rlys processes 3,712 tenders in 5 months

Electronic procurement or e-procurement is getting popular in the Indian Railways with over 3,712 e-tenders uploaded and opened in the last five months or so.

On the Railways’ e-procurement Web site, which was launched around August-September 2008, over 1,737 e-tenders are currently uploaded (yet to be opened), 1,778 e-tenders have already been opened and over 197 purchase orders have been issued in last five-six months. Over 1,800 vendors, who are (potential) suppliers, have registered themselves on the Web site.

Zonal rlys To invite bids

The online procurement process started in various zones and five production units of the Railways September 2008 onwards. As on date, nine railway zones and five production units have already adopted e-procurement. The Ministry has asked the nine zonal railways and five production units to float and open all their tenders electronically by March 31, 2009. “All of them have agreed,” said an official source. While the exact value of these tenders could not be ascertained, an official source said that the five production units have annual procurement of about Rs 5,000 crore or so. “As for the zonal railways, each zone procures about Rs 500-800 crore worth of rolling stock and maintenance spares,” said the source.

Indian Railways procures goods valued at about Rs 16,500 crore annually and this excludes procurement of another Rs 5,000-odd crore.

HOW IT IS DONE

Steps currently included in the e-procurement system are – uploading of tender document by the Railway official concerned on the Web site; submission of tenders before the last date of bidding; opening and evaluation of the bids; details of purchase order.

The vendors have to register themselves and submit their bids by the due date. The data is encrypted and digitally signed by the vendors.

After the due date, the system opens the bids at a time determined by the Railway official (in charge for that particular tender), evaluates the financials of all bidders (with a break-up of price and basic taxes), lists the compliance parameters (or deviations, if any, from the required technical parameters) and puts all these data in tabular form.

E-procurement is being adopted to progressively move towards a paperless, online procurement system with maximum transparency, said an official involved in the project.

The nine zonal railways are — Central, East Coast, North Central, Northern, South Central, South East Central, Southern, West Coast and Western. The production units are Diesel Loco Works, Diesel Loco Modernisation Works, Integrated Coach Factory, Rail Coach Factory and Rail Wheel Factory. The e-procurement system is administered by Broadvision and HCL for the Railways.

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