Airport expansion to pilot new procurement scheme

Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha Friday said the system would be expanded to other state projects later.
Speaking on his weekly television programme, Prayut said his military-led regime had brought in the system to improve the transparency of procurement by state enterprises.
Disclosure of construction information of large-scale projects will now be in accordance with global standards, he claimed.
“Without this, accusations – both factual and false – will keep being thrown back and forth” between accusers and the accused.
He said the CoST system would reduce the channels available for those in authority for personal gain and would boost the efficiency of the civil sector’s regulatory and inspection procedures.
It covers the processes of terms of reference issuance, bidding, construction and examination.
“The government has also brought into use ‘integrity pacts’, where a state agency making the procurement and all private entities that submit their price quotations must pledge, in the contract, to abstain from bribery and to accept scrutiny at all steps.”
 The procuring agency and the entity awarded the contract must allow probes by independent panels manned by experts or those from civil society.
Prayut added that the Bangkok Mass Transit Authority’s procurement of buses powered by natural gas for vehicles and the Mass Rapid Transit Authority of Thailand’s expansion project for the Blue Line would be pilot projects for the integrity pacts. This will allow issues and operational risks to be discovered before a draft bill or a measure is developed to become standard usage by other projects.
He added that as head of the military’s ruling National Council for Peace and Order, he had ordered the establishment of a national anti-corruption committee to foster synergy in preventing and suppressing graft within the state sector.
Although this effort existed before, the work was spread across many agencies and there was no primary body that took care of management matters. Now with this committee, work will be done more quickly and the coordinated anti-graft effort will be accepted by all parties. The committee will coordinate affairs amongh agencies, making the work quicker, he claimed.