Project Description

The Government of Pakistan through its Federal SAP Secretariat located in the planning and development division, ministry of planning and development, signed the contract with M/s. ECIL on June 19, 1995 to provide consulting services for monitoring SAP Procurement Activities in accordance with the IDA Procurement Guidelines. The main features of the services were institutional strengthening of the client staff towards improved procurement skill and financial management through workshop and training and through on the job working experience with the Consultants staff.

The following three tasks over the period of thirty months were performed:

Services

Task 1:

Conduct a prior review of the first five procurement requirements initiated, subsequent to consultant appointment, by each of the GOP/Provinces/AJK implementing agencies.

Task 2:

Conduct a prior review of the procurement documents for all requirements with an expected value of US$ 25,000 equivalent, or more.

Task 3:

Conduct an ex-post review of the procurement documents for all other procurement using acceptable sampling techniques. The ex-post review will include a sample of all procurement accomplished prior to the signing of the Credit Agreement which will be eligible for retroactive financing.

Under this contract ECIL reviewed almost five thousand five hundred procurement amounting to Rs. 7,057 million. These reviews covered all the four provinces of Pakistan, AJK, FATA and FANA. The procurement review included the procurement of goods, civil works and consulting services. ECIL performance of this contract was remarkable because due to our competent professional services, the mis-procurement percentage was reduced from 70% to 20% during the contract period.

ECIL has prepared a database for the addresses and offices of all the concerned SAP Agencies involved in SAP Procurement. This database can be very helpful for the subject project for contracting any concerned official if required for financial auditing under the project. Under the contract ECIL conducted training workshops for the client and the line departments.

In addition to it, ECIL gained valuable experience in preparation of checklists required to audit procurement. For contract execution ECIL had to collect a vast amount of data from the field; this data was then filed in an organized manner in such a way which made it easily accessible. This data was then computerized and recorded in the master file using Excel. Our professional experts then analyse this data to evaluate the number of mis-procurement in each and every province of Pakistan including AJK, FATA and FANA.

Under this contract ECIL had to prepare quarterly and annual reports to be submitted to the GOP and donors. The presentation of the analysed data was presented in such a manner that the detailed information was concentrated and highlighted in short tabular format. Graphical presentations of the data were also provided in the reports which immediately gave access to any information to the concerned person.

During this contract ECIL professional and secretarial staff acquired skills in data collection, preparation of checklist, maintenance of an effective record of various filing procedures, experience in the use of different packages of computer programs, analysing the database, compilation of effective presentation of reports.

ECIL was also required to make presentations to the ranking of officials, of the Government of Pakistan, all the Provinces of Pakistan, including AJK, FANA, FATA and the donor agencies. These presentations were highly appreciated by the donor agencies and concerned GOP officials.