I have always been curious about open contracting, public procurement and so on since my engagement in CAHURAST, Nepal. I still remember my innocent reaction when my colleagues were sharing me about Open Contracting Partnership and it’s initiations. At that moment, I was like hmmmm…?? What are you guys talking about? I don’t know anything. Please explain me etc mixed up queries. For me, it was like puzzles of data standard, open contracting, public procurement, bidding, open data cycle, PPMO, PPIP portal, glossary and etc.
I have been involved in community-based monitoring for three years, so I was excited to start practicing our monitoring approach this year to open up procurement data about community development projects, such as roads, bridges, drinking water, and administrative buildings.
The government is the largest procuring body in Nepal with annual procurement spending totaling around US$ 650 million, or 20 percent of the national GDP. In addition, nearly half of Nepal’s budget is allocated to development and large amount of this sum, more than 60 percent, is disbursed on procurement. Out of that, majority portion is spent for roads and other infrastructure procurement following the government’s priority to develop physical infrastructures.