Sri Lanka’s electronic Government procurement platform has handled almost Rs 42 billion in transactions since 2020 and is heading for a major expansion next year. If PROMISe can make public purchasing more visible and competitive, the real question is why so much Government procurement should remain outside it.
The Government is the biggest buyer in Sri Lanka.
Every year enormous amounts of public money move through purchases ranging from office supplies and medicines to construction, consultancy and major infrastructure. Wherever that amount of money meets discretion, paperwork and closed doors, the opportunity for waste and corruption follows close behind.
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Sri Lanka may finally have an opportunity to make considerably more of that process visible.
The Government is preparing to expand its electronic procurement system, PROMISe.lk, in 2027, taking the platform beyond its present limits and into national and international competitive bidding for goods, works, consultancy and non-consultancy services.
The numbers are already substantial.
Since 2020, more than 80,000 electronic procurements have reportedly been conducted through the system, with their cumulative value reaching approximately Rs 41.9 billion. During the first seven months of 2026 alone, the value was around Rs 13.3 billion.
There are now 324 procuring entities operating on the system, including 19 of the 25 Cabinet Ministries.
Those figures sound impressive until the question is turned around.
Why are six Cabinet Ministries still outside it?
And given the enormous scale of total State procurement, why is Rs 41.9 billion over more than five years still only a relatively modest beginning?
Electronic procurement is not automatically honest procurement. A corrupt specification can be uploaded to a computer just as easily as it can be printed on paper, while a tender deliberately designed for one favoured bidder does not become competitive merely because applications are submitted online.
Technology cannot replace integrity.
But it can leave footprints.
A properly constructed electronic procurement system can create records showing when tenders were advertised, who participated, what documents were issued, when bids were submitted and opened, how procurement progressed and ultimately who received the contract.
That matters enormously in Sri Lanka, where questions surrounding public procurement repeatedly emerge only after money has been spent, contracts signed and controversy erupted.
The Government is also removing vendor registration fees from September in an effort to widen the supplier base. That is sensible if it brings more small and medium-sized businesses into competition for State contracts rather than leaving Government purchasing concentrated among businesses already familiar with navigating the procurement machinery.
Competition matters because every rupee saved belongs to the public.
But transparency must extend beyond allowing businesses to bid electronically.
The public should ultimately be able to see enough of the procurement trail to understand how its money was spent: the procuring institution, broad requirement, successful bidder, contract value and relevant award information, subject only to genuinely necessary legal or commercial restrictions.
That is where PROMISe could become considerably more important than another Government website.
Sri Lanka has created commissions, circulars, procurement guidelines and layers of committees in the name of protecting public money. Yet questionable procurement continues to appear with depressing regularity.
Moving procurement online will not abolish corruption.
Moving the information into daylight, however, makes corruption more difficult to hide.
The proposed 2027 expansion should therefore be accompanied by an equally important Government commitment: progressively bring every Ministry and as much eligible State procurement as practicable onto a common electronic system, preserve a searchable public record of awards and explain clearly whenever significant procurement is permitted to occur outside it.
Rs 41.9 billion has already travelled through PROMISe.
The real measure of success will not be how much money passes through the platform.
It will be how difficult the platform makes it for public money to disappear without explanation.
Be that as it may.
