Not stationery, govt inching towards pvt cos

NEW DELHI: When we talked liberalisation, we presumably didn’t talk government office stationery like paper and pins. After 20 years and over a decade since liberalisation, the private sector can finally think of bagging a slice of this captive government market. Till now, government purchases of office stationery were restricted to some cooperatives. It is only now that an order dated 1981 is poised to be corrected to allow an even keel to all players by way of an open tender. While for high-value purchases, the government has been going in for open tenders, now these rules will apply to all categories of establishment purchases. Now, all purchases made by the government would be through the open tender route. The government’s establishment expenses runs into crores with over 100 ministries and departments and also equal number of public sector units and autonomous organisations within each. And, office stationery expenses also run to a huge annual bill, a finance ministry official said. Acording to the archaic 1981 order, all local stationery purchases of the government were to be made mandatorily only by the cooperative Kendriya Bhandar. Subsequently, others like Super Bazaar and the NCCF found a place in this cooperative-led race for the captive government market. Finance ministry sources said the department of personnel and training are looking at reviewing the 1981 order and allowing all purchases made by the government under the open tender route, in line with the spirit of liberalisation. Interestingly, there are also other instances where institutions have government as a captive market. For instance, government employees can undertake official travel only by national carriers, Indian Airlines or Air-India. And, only in cases like where there is no connectivity etc, can other carriers enter this market, sources said. The anomaly in the 1981 order was that it sought to encourage the cooperatives by relaxing the general financial rules for purchases of government stationery and housekeeping. While the government wants to rectify the situation by opening this market for other players, it also wants to go slow in minimising the monopoly enjoyed by the cooperatives. In the open tender route, the cooperatives would get an advantage as per the government’s purchase preference policy. So, the private players have to quote very competitively to bag a contract.