New online public procurement system to be fully rolled out this week

The electronic government procurement system, or e-GP, used for public procurement is set to become fully operational in its new form this week.

According to Public Procurement Monitoring Office Secretary Bishwa Babu Pudasaini, the office had shut down the old system after discovering that contracts had been hacked to manipulate results in favour of certain parties.

He said the new system was developed by a software company over about two months. Secretary Pudasaini said the system is already directly running and will be fully implemented this week.

He said the system is being rolled out only after office technicians tested it in various stages, and claimed the risk of hacking in the new system is very low.

According to Secretary Pudasaini, such irregularities had appeared in contracts worth billions of rupees, involving both domestic and international hackers. He claimed the government mechanism has succeeded in removing such irregularities seen in contracts.