Registering with e-Perolehan: Firm aims to sign up all government suppliers

Commerce Dot Com Sdn Bhd hopes to achieve 100 per cent government supplier registration by the end of the year, with an average of 1,500 new registrations each month from 30,000 or 86 percent of the already registered suppliers with e-Perolehan.

Its chief executive Datuk Mohd Salleh Masduki said this in Petaling Jaya yesterday at a media briefing on the e-Perolehan project.

The e-Perolehan, the national e-Procurement system, is jointly developed and implemented by the Finance Ministry and Commerce Dot Com.

Mohd Salleh urged all suppliers to the Government, big and small, to sign up with the national e-procurement system as those who were not e-Perolehan enabled would no longer be able to do business with the Government in the future.

e-Perolehan enables all the government procurement centres in Malaysia to purchase goods and services via the Internet.

Mohd Salleh said that two modules, supplier registration and central contract of the sophisticated government-to-business (G2B) e-commerce system, have gone live since October 2000 and it was fully functional.

The direct purchase modules had been completed and would be rolled out today, while the tender modules were in the process of being developed and rolled out later this year, he said.

Since its implementation, the administration division of some government agencies, namely the Malaysian Administration Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU), Accountant-General, Auditor-General, Treasury, Prime Minister's Department, Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Primary Industries and Ministry of Health, have already begun doing business transactions via the ePerolehan system.

With the system's live mode, the government procurement centres or PTJ (Pusat Tanggungjawab), starting with those in the Klang Valley, would eventually make purchases only from those who registered and listed their goods and services with e-Perolehan.

The suppliers would need to design and submit electronic catalogues of their goods and services to be uploaded into e-Perolehan so that the government buyers would be able to browse their products and services through an electronic catalogue.

This effectively means that all suppliers to the Government, currently totalling 35,000 nationwide, need to be e-Perolehan enabled to continue getting business from the Government.

Mohd Salleh also said that Commerce Dot Com was in the process of expanding its e-Perolehan service centre or eP Shoppe and establishing more e-Perolehan service points to support all users, especially in remote areas.

These service points cater to low volume users who could not afford to invest in the hardware to connect to e-Perolehan.

e-Perolehan is one of the first and largest e-Government flagship applications of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) initiative. It was awarded to Commerce Dot Com in 1999. — Bernama