In order to encourage public procurement, Government tenders worth Rs.130 billion had either been cancelled or withdrawn and re-issued after the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion(DIPP) intervention. The Government Official said that DIPP was taking every step for effective implementation of Public Procurement order 2017 to promote’ Made in India’ products.
To enhance income and employment in the country GOI issued an order on June 15, 2017, to promote manufacturing and production of goods and services in India. A tender for setting up of a urea and ammonia plant for gasification had been intervened with and the tender worth Rs.8000 crore was withdrawn and reissued with modified conditions.
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Certain provisions in the tender for procurement of train set coaches had been discriminatory against domestic manufacturers and favoured foreign players, so it was cancelled. The project cost was 50 billion. In March, PM Narendra Modi had expressed concerns at the restrictive and discriminatory clauses imposed against domestic manufacturers and suppliers in tender documents for public procurement.
A series of meetings are being held with all the concerned departments and ministries including steel, railways, defence, oil and gas, pharmaceutical, electronics, telecommunications, heavy industries, textiles, shipping and power regarding this. The GOI official added that directions had been given to ensure strict compliance of the order in letter and spirit and that all the nodal ministeries had been directed to ensure notification of local content.
DIPP has given strict notifications to issue guidelines and notifications relating to declarations of items with sufficient local capacity, domestic content. The Public Procurement order, giving preference to ‘Make in India’ envisages that all the Central Government departments, their attached or subordinate offices and the autonomous bodies controlled by the Government of India shall ensure purchase preference be given to domestic suppliers in government procurement.
It provides for 20% margin of purchase preference, while 50% of minimum local content required shall be followed. Its the responsibility of the Central Vigilance Officers as demanded by the Central Vigilance Commission to oversee all contracts above Rs.5 crore and make sure that restrictive and discriminatory clauses against domestic suppliers are not included in the tender documents for public procurement by Central Government agencies. They also have to make sure that the tender conditions are in sync with the order.
Any grievance to the issue will be taken care of by a standing committee on the implementation of this order. The standing committee is chaired by DIPP Secretary Ramesh Abhishek. The defence, pharmaceutical and several other ministries have already identified the number of items for declaring domestic content.
The Department of Defence has identified about 90 such items fit for domestic procurement. The Pharmaceutical Department will be notifying the norms for four major categories including consumables, implants.
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