As the global challenge of low cost manufacturing persists and begins to concentrate in some of the emerging economies, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley,said, global tenders may be more desirable. But he cautions that countries should ensure that domestic industry also grows, especially services with effective Competition built up within the country.
Addressing the National Conference on Public Procurement and Competition Law organised by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) and Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs, Jaitley said, “but jurisprudence has grown to a large extent and competitive jurisprudence in this emerging area would grow in next few decades to address these issues.
Junaid Kamal Ahmad, Country Director, World Bank India, said any shift in public procurement is huge and will be instrumental in creating competition. “This includes enabling foreign bidders to come into ours and ours to go out,” he said. This means revamping system to remove the barriers. “For moving to next change, procurement revamp will be important,” he added.
Injeti Srinivas, Secretary, Ministry of Corporate Affairs, said public procurement in India is important than developed countries given that it accounts for 26 per cent (Rs 28 lakh crore). “They can influence economy’s performance,” he said. If there is more efficiency in public procurement process, Srinivas said, cost saving could be 20-30 per cent that is huge given the volume.
With the market moving towards public private partnership model and advent of newer technologies are posing challenges.