“One assessment for multiple procurements in whole procedure has saved assessment cost and improved procurement efficiency,” said Hu Shihui, Director of the Medical Engineering Department of the Yichang No.1 Municipal Hospital when he talked about the outcomes brought forth by reformed government procurement mechanism of the Yichang Financial Bureau.
In April, the Yichang No.1 Municipal Hospital reported its annual procurement list of imported medical equipment worth US$134.25 million to the local government. All the procurement plans were approved at the only assembled panel meeting. Whoever, before the reform, the procedure was time-consuming, costly and inefficient if an institute purchases imported equipment to meet requirement at work , as every single program needs to be approved by a panel with at least five experts.
The government’s idea is to streamline administration, delegate power to lower levels, combine regulating and empowering, and optimize services. As well as the Yichang Financial Bureau has “simplified” government procurement, thus providing purchasers with much convenience and contributing to the path of reform.
In order to further streamline management procedures for government procurement, the financial pre-approval system is transformed into filing system, the financial examination and approval links are eliminated in government procurement plans and contracts. Within financial department’s budget, the office in charge of budget can directly register in government procurement management system online of the Municipal Financial Bureau after approval of competent department. The system will automatically generate the number of the program and issue the task to centralized purchasing agency or related agencies. The contracts also can be directly filed online. All these help to save at least three days more than before.
In order to reinforce the government’s right of procurement and allow purchasers to make decisions, the bureau has raised the limit standard of government procurement, in which the project of non-centralized purchasing has been raised to US$30,680. Projects of goods and services have been increased to US$153,400, and the engineering projects have been raised to US$306,800 in the second adjustment of the standard limit. Since the improvement of the limit standard of open tendering, the public tendering scope of the budget department is expanded and then purchasers can choose more suitable organizations and purchasing ways. Therefore the purchasers can truly make independent decisions and purchase “cost-effective” products. The time of posting announcement alone also is decreased by 17 days if the budget department adopts the private tendering.
Do simplified examination procedures and loose limit standard mean the procurement is out of control? Definitely not.
We should make good use of combined regulating and empowering. While simplifying the pre-approval procurement, the bureau strengthens the super vision on them. On the one hand, the mechanism should be improved. On the principles of“different rights for different situations, authorizing rights according to posts, and granting rights according to levels”, various departments establish the government procurement internal control management system and the purchasers will undertake the main responsibility of procurement, which can fundamentally overcome the inappropriate behaviors including “excessive procurement”, “willful purchasing”, etc. On the other hand, the supervision should be strengthened. The inspection of the internal control management system by the Municipal Financial Bureau has become normalized, and enough supervision has been given to the on-site evaluation of government procurement. (Reporter: Xie Zuocai)