BPP to classify contractors according to capacity
On February 10, 2012 · In Business
By Peter Egwuatu
THE Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) has began classification of contractors according to their capacity to execute government contracts, as a way of streamlining public procurement in the country with a view to improve efficiency.
Director General, BPP, Engr. Emeka Ezeh disclosed this to newsmen. He said that BPP is classifying contractors according to the strength of their technical, financial and general capacity to execute projects and other procurement activities as a way of enabling government have a database of companies and their various strengths.
Engr. Ezeh explained that the database will make it easy to cross check the capacities of all companies bidding for any contract so as to know in good time, what they are capable of doing.
He said “If you say you are a building contractor for instance, we say within the building contractors there are different classes. In other words, it is not everybody who calls himself a building contractor that can do a 10 storey building because the technology and financial capacity that is required are different. Some are building contractors but they can only build bungalows.”
“Companies of certain classification who are in category A, are those who have the necessary equipment, human beings and financial capabilities to do a certain kind of work. Thereafter you go to the next level class B, C and D. So that when MDAs are asking for advertisement, they will say contractors registered under this category A are invited. The advantage is that it stops everybody who thinks that ‘I m a contractor’ from competing becaause there is already some sense of elimination.”
The BPP boss explained that the classification will eliminate cases of contractors making false claims about the capacity, pointing out that this will further enhance transparency and effectiveness in budget implementation.
Engr. Ezeh explained that the classification and registration of contractors by the BPP will eliminate multiple registration of contractors with various ministries and agencies since they can now all register with one agency and be qualified to tender for contracts in all federal agencies and ministries.
“Now you have one stop shop where once you are given a pin number by BPP it becomes your reference number. So at the click of a button at the data centre we have established everything. It tells us your company, your name, the category and the class you belong to.”
If you are a road contractor, it tells whether you are in class A of the road contractors. If you are a building contractor, it tells your category and so on. It says who your owners are, your capacity, the jobs you have done before and things like that and that will be linked to your CAC, till number, tax identification number so that all the claims of the people can easily be verified.
He added that companies that found to have submitted false claims about the capacity will be barred from being registered for five years.
