Bangladesh Mahila Parishad - Norad

50• office equipment of specialized nature;• prices are fixed by tradition or cartel agreement;• product can only be made in supplier’s own plant; or• Responses received against tender are not satisfactory.During our review, we have observed that in some cases, procurements were notdone following the above rules.Recommendation1) BMP management should give particular emphasis on implementation ofprocurement policies and procedures as per financial manual;2) If policies and procedures in the manual require amendment, necessary stepsshould be taken to amend them;3) Procurement committee should be reconstituted. Senior management shouldnot be a part of procurement committee although they will be monitoring itvery closely. If a contractor is awarded contract all the time, they should alsoquestion why this is happening and if the document submitted are genuine.4) Under no circumstances, vendors should be asked to arrange quotations.5) Management of BMP must remain cautious about donor’s zero tolerancepolicy on corruption;6) If single sourcing is preferred due to some valid reasons, necessary provisioncould be made in the procurement policy. BMP may also want to have longterm service agreement with some vendors to get benefit from the economiesof scale and saving time.7) In order to speed up the process, threshold for tendering could be raised andinitiative could be taken to enlist vendors.Allocation of Joint/Common CostsBMP had only one foreign donor for many years. Recently Danida also startedfunding BMP and therefore allocation of joint cost among these two projects hasbecome relevant. Allocation of joint cost is applicable for Rent and Overhead ofHead Office, Salary of some of the key positions (e.g. Directors Finance, ChiefAccountant) and usage of common facilities like vehicle and others.RecommendationBMP should adopt one of the generally accepted methods for allocating joint costs.In this connection, different methods of allocation of joint cost should be includedin the financial manual of BMP. BMP must apply one of these methods consistentlyfor all the projects and document allocation process thoroughly.