The government is working to streamline the central public procurement policy to bring transparency, curb irregularities, and corruption. The new procurement policy is intended to plug inconsistencies in governmment procurement arising due to multiplicity of guidelines.

With 15 percent of the union budget earmarked for procurments, the absence of uniform guidelines made for fertile grounds for corruption.

The new policy will also incude procurement of services with a focus on engaging experts on contractual basis instead of permanent employment. There are no rules for hiring of experts and professionals on contracts so far. Most of the public-private-partnership (PPP) projects have such professionals working on the government payroll.

There will, however, be no centralised procurement, according to M Raman, chemicals secretary to the government and the former director-general of supplies and disposal(DG-S&D).

A commitee of secretaries will be discussing Raman's concept paper on the draft policy next week. The draft suggests a central public procurement law to cover purchases by all government departments and organisations and lay down rules for different type of procurements. It also reccomends two other corollary laws: a substantive law enacted by Parliament to lay down rights and obligations of the public procurement entities and a procedural law that may be laid down by the government, without going to Parliament, to specify the sector-specific rules and procedures for procurement.The ministries can tweak the second but it should be "in complete concordance with the public procurement law, both substantive and procedural."

The substantive law will be over-arching covering all issues related to the government purchases like registration of supply sources, modes of tender, security, terms of contract, pricing elements, quality control, tender evaluation and settlement of disputes.

The draft document envisages the creation of an independent national nodal authority for public procurement that may be called authority, commission or board. It will be a law-making and regulatory body, with an advisory role overseeing the procurement activities. It can also be assigned the task of establishing an e-procurement portal or lay down guidelines for a national e-procurement programme.

Cabinet secretary K M Chandrasekhar has reportedly wanted Raman's involvement in salvaging the Commonwealth Games preparation but he declined saying that it was too late for his department's involvement given the massive pendency of purchases and tight deadlines.