Pregnancy, Pregnant woman, IVF

Maternal nutrition is critical to India's health and economic future, with interventions and supplements key to breaking the cycle of malnutrition

Investing in mothers is investing in India's future

Business Standard

The Bill, once enacted, will govern the ethical behaviour of Indian companies in their foreign operations

Sandeep Verma: Fixing the Foreign Bribery Bill

The problem with copy-paste law-making extends deep into state formulations: a recent Kerala draft public procurement Bill is an exact replica of the Central PP Bill, including the phrase "national security" borrowed into the Kerala version

Sandeep Verma: Why procurement reform in Indian states is tricky

Its report on Indian govt procurement norms is not only astonishingly one-sided but riddled with factual omissions

Flawed premises in US Trade Representative report

From an integrity perspective, the First-Come-First-Served (FCFS) system is undoubtedly the most problematic method of awarding government contracts and licenses, but over the years, many other anti-competitive practices have gradually found their way into public procurement systems around the world, particularly in jurisdictions with poor acquisition planning capabilities or with poor oversight mechanisms. This article examines some of these anti-competitive methods, together with possible alternatives and reforms for improving their procurement practices in general.

Anti-competitive practices in government contracts

In her pre-Independence Day address, the President of India advocated the need for enhanced transparency and accountability in government, stressing the need for the adoption of rational and practical approaches in addressing these challenges.

Towards transparency in public procurement

As India gets on way to make significant changes to her government contracting frameworks, it may be worthwhile to survey international practices on two important aspects of domestic preferences in public procurement, namely: (a) the participation of foreign bidders in domestic public procurement markets; and (b) the treatment of non-government actors such as state-owned enterprises (SOEs) - or PSUs as we know them in India - under national government procurement laws.

Domestic preferences in public procurement

Procurement procedures practiced hitherto in awarding public contracts in India, as well as in most developing countries, have generally refrained from allowing simultaneous negotiations between procuring entities and participating bidders at the pre-contract stage, the default practice being the selection of the lowest-priced supplier out of technically acceptable bids received. A number of CVC instructions already recognise negotiations as possible sources of serious integrity problems, allowing them to be conducted only under certain limited circumstances. The recently notified Draft PPP Policy and the Draft Public Procurement Bill have changed this regulatory landscape by introducing &ldquo;Competitive Dialogue&rdquo; and &ldquo;Competitive Negotiations&rdquo; to government contracts in India, and it may therefore be worthwhile for practitioners to be briefed on the nuances of these newly proposed procurement methods.