Commerce Dot Com targets 100pc suppliers registration

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, said its chief executive Datuk Mohd Salleh Masduki at a media briefing in Petaling Jaya, Selangor, yesterday.

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, to sign up with the national e-procurement system to enable them 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 e-commerce system — have gone live since October 2000 and were fully functional. The direct purchase modules have been completed and would be rolled out today, while the tender modules were in the process of being developed and will roll out later this year, he added.

Since its implementation, the administration division of some government agencies, namely the Malaysian Administration Modernisation and Management Planning Unit, 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, 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 through their products and services via 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 parts of the country. These service points cater to low-volume users who could not afford to invest in the hardware to connect to e-Perolehan. — Bernama