DHAKA, Sept 5, 2025 (BSS) – The government is working to make easy the conditions of donor agencies or lending countries for ensuring more competition in procurement process and reducing project costs aimed at sustaining the country’s development.
 
To this end, officials concerned mentioned that the government has begun to communicate with lending agencies to reduce their conditions and project costs.
 
Talking to BSS, Chief Adviser’s Special Assistant for the Ministry of Road Transport and Bridge Sheik Moinuddin said that due to conditions of lending countries and agencies, the procurement process has become increasingly monopolised by fund providing country’s firms, with systemic limitations built into tender documents.
 
“The government always follows the Open Tender Method (OTM) to ensure the procurement activities in a fair, transparent, and competitive manner. But, in some foreign funded projects, the concerned countries or agencies include some conditions when they give loans. We are planning to take loans for projects without conditions,” he added.
 
Managing Director of the Dhaka Mass Transit Company Limited Faruque Ahmed said the government is working to ensure competitive environment in the procurement process which drives cost savings, encourages innovation, fosters fairness, and promotes responsible sourcing of goods and services.
 
“A well-managed competitive tender process encourages suppliers to offer their best prices and quality, while allowing governments to achieve sustainability and social responsibility goals through their purchasing power,” he added.
 
Explaining about the conditions of lending agencies and countries, he mentioned that bidders of some packages under metro rail construction projects bided above the estimated costs due to limited competition.
 
Referring to a recent tender for package 07 under MRT Line 1, Faruque Ahmed said bidders have bided around 27 percent lower than the estimated costs as the authority has ensured competitive environment.
 
For the package 07, he said that the Pre-qualification (PQ) invitation was issued on 9 March 2023, attracting bids from 11 entities across five countries (Bangladesh, China, Japan, India, and South Korea) by 8 June 2023.
 
On 15 July 2024, nine bidders were pre-qualified and from those, seven bidders purchased tender documents, he added.
 
At last, he informed that only three Chinese companies have submitted tender for the package.
 
Former Lead Economist at the World Bank's Dhaka office Dr Zahid Hussain urged the government to negotiate more with donor agencies or lending countries to reduce conditions for ensuring competitiveness in tender process.
 
He also laid emphasis on selecting the best option of funding for any projects side by side calculate the expenditure and return properly for any project.
 
“A large part of Bangladesh's infrastructure development projects are foreign-financed. There is a debate about how much of the purpose of these loans is to support the economic development of the recipient country and how much is to expand the business and increase exports of the lending country,” he added.
 
In the case of loans from multilateral international organizations such as the World Bank and ADB, he said, there have no purpose of expanding the business of various multinational corporations.
 
However, in the case of bilateral loans, he mentioned that there have purposes to expand business through various conditions in the procurement, appointment of consultants and contractors.
 
In general, there should be no problem in borrowing the capital required for a country's development project from another country, but it should be profitable for both, he added.
 
But in some cases, he said, it is also seen that the organization of the country that is providing the loan is planning the project, conducting feasibility studies, working as a consultant, and also implementing the project as a contractor.
 
“Most of the purchases for the project are also being made by the lending country. As a result, not only is the profit and loss assessment of the project not done impartially, but the cost of the project also increases,” he added.