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India, China walk out, 4 firms in fray
KATHMANDU, JUL 01 -
India and China did not bid for the Machine Readable Passport (MRP) supply to Nepal at the last moment. With this, only four out of the 16 international security-printing companies submitted bid documents on Thursday to supply MRPs to Nepal.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) had announced a fresh bid on May 18 for the MRP supply with a 45-day deadline, which expired on Thursday.
The four companies-De La Rue (UK), 3M (Singapore), Oberthur (France) and Perum Peruri of Indonesia have submitted the bid documents at MoFA.
3M and Oberthur have already participated in the multi-million dollar bid that was invited in 2009-end. Citing technical reasons, MoFA had cancelled the earlier bid on Jan 15. This has led Nepal to miss the April 1 deadline to adopt the MRP and it has sought extension of the deadline until Jan 1, 2011. The government has sent a request to the Canada-based International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) seeking another five months’ grace period to launch the MRP.
Among the four, the French company, Oberthur, is the lowest bidder, which has offered to supply an MRP at US $ 3.50. The other three firms have offered US $ 6.26 (De La Rue), $4.50 (3M), $5.90 (Perum Peruri).
“It is not necessary that the lowest bidder must be awarded the contract. It is a package deal and those who come clean on that while evaluating the documents will get the contract,” sources familiar with the affair told the Post.
An experience of MRP supply to at least two countries was a basic requirement here.
Although two Indian firms and one Chinese company had acquired the MRP documents at the cost of Rs. 10,000 each, they did not enter the fray.
“We will soon hold a pre-evaluation meet and will take a call on the contract,” a MoFA official said. The firm that is awarded the contract will provide the first consignment only after 70 days of striking the agreement with MoFA.
“After receiving the first consignment of the MRPs by the contracting party, MoFA will issue the first copy of MRP after 15 days, according to tender documents. Judging all these time constraints, we have asked the deadline be extended by Dec. 1,” the official said.
Posted on: 2010-07-02 08:09
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