Graft panel touts 'integrity pact' for project bidding

The measures came out of yesterday’s first meeting of the government-appointed National Committee against Corruption to help prevent irregularities during the bidding process for government projects.
Pramon Sutivong, chairman of the Anti-Corruption Organisation of Thailand (ACT), said the concept of an integrity pact would be adopted in future bidding for public projects.
Also, representatives from the civic sector would join officials from agencies in supervising the bidding process, starting with drafting the terms of reference and setting the median price to selecting the winner. The meeting, held at Government House, was chaired by Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha.
Pramon said he expects experts from the civil sector to help boost transparency in bidding and contracting. Irregularities in the past often occurred during the process of bidding for public projects, he said
The integrity proposal approved by the NCC would be submitted to the Cabinet meeting on Tuesday for endorsement, he said.
The first projects under the pact will be the procurement of a new NGV-fuelled public bus fleet for the Bangkok Mass Transit Authority and the construction of the extension of the Blue Line subway route.
The integrity pact, developed by international non-governmental organisation Transparency Interna-tional, is aimed at preventing corruption in public contracting.
It is essentially an agreement between the government agency offering a contract and the companies bidding for it that they will abstain from bribery, collusion and other corrupt practices for the extent of the contract. To ensure accountability, integrity pacts also include a monitoring system typically led by civil society groups.
Comptroller-General Manas Jamveha, who also attended the NCC meeting, said the concept of the integrity pact would be included in a new law on public contracting to be considered by the Cabinet on Tuesday.
“The [NCC] meeting discussed the integrity pact. In the future, the civil sector will also help with preventing corruption in the process of public contracting,” he said. The Cabinet would also look into the integrity pact in detail at its next meeting, he said. The integrity pact will be signed by the state agency holding the bidding, the businesses seeking the public project and observers from civil society, said Maj-General Sansern Kaewkamnerd, a deputy government spokesman.