Islamabad
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) recently signed an agreement with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) on alternative procurement arrangements (APA), allowing co-financed projects to follow a single procurement framework. ADB signed a similar agreement with the World Bank last year.
Under ADB’s procurement framework, the APA allows one bank to be the lead co-financier on a project and the procurement of all, or a portion of, the contracts under the project to follow the lead co-financier’s procurement policies and procedures, says a statement issued on Friday.
“We entered into such an agreement with EBRD and the World Bank because they have a bigger number of co-financed projects with us than any other multilateral development banks,” said the Director General of ADB’s Procurement, Portfolio, and Financial Management Department Ms Risa Zhijia Teng.
The arrangement allows co-financed projects to be implemented more efficiently by applying a single framework to the whole project, thereby reducing the end-to-end procurement time and transaction costs for ADB’s clients. ADB is negotiating with other multilateral agencies the opportunity to use similar arrangements under co-financed projects. This will lessen the burden on executing and implementing agencies that have traditionally used multiple procurement frameworks on a single project.
ADB is committed to achieving a prosperous, inclusive, resilient and sustainable Asia and the Pacific, while sustaining its efforts to eradicate extreme poverty.
In 2018, it made commitments of new loans and grants amounting to $21.6 billion. Established in 1966, it is owned by 68 members,49 from the region.—APP
