The fourth South Asia Regional Public Procurement Conference starts in Sri Lanka's capital Colombo today.

The four-day conference, to be held in Colombo and the hill capital Kandy, will end on February 3.

It follows on three other conferences held in Kathmandu in 2011, Pakistan in 2014 and Bangladesh in 2015.

The conference - hosted by the Department of Public Finance and the Ministry of Finance, is co-sponsored by the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and Islamic Development Bank.

It is an annual learning, knowledge and experience sharing, and networking event for the heads of public procurement agencies in the eight South Asian countries

The conference is an important feature of the evolving South Asia Region Public Procurement Network (SARPPN), and aims to provide a mutual learning platform for key stakeholders to make public procurement systems more effective in utilising public resources.

The theme of the Fourth Conference ‘E-GP in South Asia – Achievements, Opportunities and Challenges’. E-GP (electronic procurement) is an innovative tool of public procurement and countries in the region are at different stages of the introduction and operationalisation.

Participants will include over 60 high-level government officials responsible for public procurement policymaking, oversight agencies, and representatives from several development partners active in Sri Lanka, the World Bank said in a statement