ePerolehan on track to meet Govt objective

ePEROLEHAN, a major e-Government project under the Multimedia Super Corridor initiative, is on track to meet its objective of creating an electronic marketplace for the Government and its suppliers to trade with each other.

The Government is expected to set a deadline for this project in the very near future.

Commerce Dot Com Sdn Bhd said ePerolehan had successfully utilised the Smidex 2002 exhibition last week to further step up efforts to enable small and medium enterprises to go online.

Commerce Dot Com is tasked to develop, implement and manage the system with the help of the Finance Ministry.

Among the steps taken to drive the take-up rate of ePerolehan is the current offer for complimentary data entry services in the electronic catalogue for up to 10 items.

Commerce Dot Com said in a statement the normal cost of creating an e-catalogue to be uploaded is about RM15 for every item.

A special tele-enablement initiative has been designed to attract ePerolehan suppliers.

The response has been overwhelming with more than 500 suppliers submitting 4,500 catalogues in the first two weeks of the campaign, the company noted.

We are also in the process of expanding our ePerolehan service centres or eP Shoppe and establishing more ePerolehan service points to support all users especially those in remote areas, said Commerce Dot Com chief executive Datuk Mohd Salleh Madsuki.

The service points cater to low volume users who cannot afford to invest in the hardware to connect to ePerolehan.

Mohd Salleh said although almost all of the countrys 35,000 regular government suppliers have registered with ePerolehan, there is an urgent need to get themselves enabled with the system.

Getting enabled, he said, is simple as registered suppliers are only required to spend RM400 for an ePerolehan smart card and ePerolehan smart card reader.

The investment excludes the cost of a computer which is something that every business person already owns.

Since the launch of the direct purchase procurement module early this year, the government procurement centres or PTJ (Pusat Tanggungjawab) now only make purchases from suppliers who have displayed their goods and services in the ePerolehan system.

ePerolehan will soon launch its tender and quotation modules that Commerce Dot Com claims will make the Government the worlds first to trade via an e-procurement system.