The launch of the Georgian electronic Government Procurement system seems to have, once again, shown the undeniable benefits of e-invoicing.
A World Bank report released Wednesday (Feb. 18) is applauding Georgia’s electronic invoicing project, which came to be fully functional only one year after the State Procurement Agency of Georgia first began designing the plan. The program was such a success, the World Bank is taking the lessons learned the Georgia’s own experience and applying those strategies to its own digital procurement program.
The Ge-GP e-invoicing system, the World Bank notes, not only boosted transparency in the government’s public procurement operations, but significantly reduced corruption risks and costs of procurement ventures. Reports say the project has so far been well received by both the public and private sectors.
The World Bank calls Georgia’s success with the initiative “clearly one of the most effective and efficient reforms undertaken in the last decade” in the nation.
Other organizations apparently agree. Reports say Transparency International, the OECD and the United Nations have all acknowledged the efforts and successes of the nation’s SPA.
Georgia first struck a partnership with the World Bank in 2012, which aimed to explore whether an e-procurement system in Georgia could ultimately work for World Bank’s own projects. Not only has the World Bank identified areas of improvement from Georgia’s undertaking of digital procurement practices – allowing the World Bank to launch its own initiative – Georgia has itself implemented the World Bank’s recommendations for improving the process.
As the World Bank launches its own e-procurement practices, it continues to reform digital procurement policy for nations around the globe. Georgia’s progress is just one of dozens of other success stories felt by other nations, a trend experts say promotes e-invoicing within the public sector as well.
The move is heavily motivated by G20 goals to strengthen the world economy, the World Bank recognizes these public sector benefits. According to a World Bank working paper published last August, “When governments shift their social, salary, and procurement payments and taxation and licensing receipts to electronic form, it creates a foundation upon which the private sector and person-to-person payments, such as international and domestic remittances, can build.”
For the organization itself, there are three key differences to its e-procurement practices compared with Georgia’s: the World Bank will not run digital reverse auctions, will disclose the estimated contract price, and will disclose bids only if the bidders agree to do so.
But the benefits to the World Bank, the globe’s economies, and the private sector are the same: bidders can participate in bidding from remote locations, and the organization has called attention to the extreme cost reductions in the procurement process; according to the World Bank, traditional procurement requires contractors to pay a fee of up to $150 to obtain bidding documents. Online, however, bidders an get those same documents for just $30.
Digital procurement strategy can aid foreign investment, too. At a forum held on Tuesday (Feb. 17), Philippines Budget Secretary Florencio Abad and EU Ambassador to the Philippines Guy Ledoux both commended the nation’s Government Electronic Procurement System and agreed that the Philippines’ modernization of procurement systems will facilitate investment from Europe and beyond.
Since implementing Georgia’s e-procurement method, the World Bank says it has finalized 14 tenders amounting to $22 million for projects rehabilitating roads, buildings and other critical infrastructure.
The World Bank has closely examined in recent years how to make the procurement process for governments around the globe more cost-effective, efficient and transparent. Last October, the group launched its own app to offer mobile device users insight into for which projects the World Bank is paying. The mobile app offers insight into just how much emphasis is placed on the digitization process.
E-procurement initiatives have been launched in dozens of nations, with emphasis on developing countries including Bangladesh, Moldova, India, Sri Lanka and Grenada.
At present, electronic procurement is one of five pillars of the World Bank’s public procurement initiative, and is in the developing stages of launching a website aimed to aid governments to modernize their procurement practices.
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