Fair competition in public procurement can clear deficit: CCI

Pitching for strong enforcement of competition laws in bidding process for public procurements, fair trade regulator CCI's Chairman D K Sikri today said it can help wipe out the entire fiscal deficit of the country.
"If the government agencies become alert as they have become now and enforce competition thoroughly in the bidding process, even two per cent savings in public procurements, including financial procurements can wipe out the entire fiscal deficit of the budget," Sikri said at an event here.
The Competition Commission of India (CCI) chief also said that the competition law is also helpful to the government when it comes to making public procurements especially.

"Cases of collusive bidding as well as cartelisation have come to the Commission from various departments of the government, state governments and public sector enterprises, they have been investigated," he added.
He also said that there is greater awareness now about the competitive bidding among the enterprises as well as the government departments.
"While evaluating the bids, they have been closely looking at the fact whether the bidders are independent and they are not under the same management, mind you this was not the case earlier and this was not appreciated in the past," the chairman said.

"Similarly, they are complaining if the prices quoted by the bidders are identical, this behaviour earlier was not given much consideration because the public enterprises would hold negotiations treating them all as L1 (lowest bidder) but now the same behaviour is being questioned and the government departments are genuinely looking for an L1 bidder who offers really a truly competitive price," he added.

He said this change has the potential to bring about considerable savings in the public procurement by the government as it constitutes 30 per cent of India's GDP (gross domestic product).
Besides, he said that competition compliance must go beyond being made a formality, it should be formalised and imbibed as an article of faith by all the businesses in the country.
"We have recently embarked upon and are preparing a competition compliance manual which is comparable to international standards and are taking the help of legal fraternity in preparing this. We are hopeful that this will help in better understanding and promoting the culture of compliance in the country amongst businesses," he added.