Haryana, Dec 19 – The High Powered Purchase Committee, constituted by the Haryana Government under the chairmanship of the Haryana Finance Minister Capt. Abhimanyu for deciding the purchases valuing above Rs. 30 lakhs of Government departments and valuing above Rs. 50 lakhs for Boards/Corporations of Haryana State held its meetings on Dec 9, 2014 and Dec 19, 2014 and decided 21 cases valuing Rs. 151 crores leading to saving of more than Rs. 325 lakhs over lowest rates. The prominent cases were text books for classes I to VIII for academic session 2015-16 and generic English Medicines, both of these items would be provided free of cost to the students & patients of Haryana State.
The High Powered Purchase Committee also reviewed the purchase procedure and noted that all the departments were not inviting the tenders through online mode. In some of the cases, the tender response was not adequate as quite limited number of bidders had participated. In order to improve the competitive biddings and transparency, HPPC decided to issue guidelines to all the Government Departments, Boards & Corporations to switch over to online tendering immediately and get all the purchase cases where tenders have been asked in physical form, decided up to January 31, 2015. After January 31, 2015, only on-line tendered cases would be placed/decided by the HPPC. The HPPC also decided that all the departments should create item-wise Date Bank comprising of details about likely bidders with an objective that the department should know in advance about likely number of manufacturers/ suppliers available for the tendered items so that the intimation regarding tender enquiry is communicated to them in order to ensure and reap advantages of competitive bidding leading to procurement at optimum rates. The HPPC also decided that the concerned departments must ensure that the specifications and eligibility criteria should not be restrictive which inhibits competition and it should be duly approved at the level of Administrative Secretary of the concerned department. The Departments should also prepare procurement plans for the entire year in advance and determine the most opportune time of procurement to get most reasonable rates. For assessing the reasonability of rates in the meeting of HPPC, the concerned Indenting Departments would be providing the rates finalized by the Government of India, other National Bodies/Associations and the rates finalized in at least three adjoining States.