Since I haven’t spoken about the K1million fire tenders, and I have done the preparation of government tenders before, all I can say is the the selection of the winner of the tenders is not heavily based on the price.
In tendering, the bidder prepares two proposals, the first – called a Technical proposal – details the specifications of the bid, the company details, financial health, audit reports etc. This is the proposal which is then looked at first. The best two or three bidders with the highest scores here are the only ones whose Financial Proposals are now opened. So from the list of about 20 companies, forget all those prices you saw, the losers’ prices wont be seen until publishing time. For technical proposals, local companies always get preferential treatment over foreign companies in the scoring system.
So when the best technical proposals have been picked, we now look at the 2 to 3 financials.
For the financial proposals, usually, the terms are explained whether the lowest financial bidder from among those top 3 technical winners would win, but that’s rare to avoid bidders making ridiculously low bids simply to win but then to compromise the whole process. Otherwise the best price would always win. So sometimes scores are made for the financial proposal and then added to the technical proposal and then the best total score wins. The rule of the thumb is technical proposal 70-80% of the total score and financial proposal 30-20% of the total score.
However, if the best scorer is also one with issues in procurement or has poor history with the owner of the bid, this can be passed on to the next best tender.
As for this price, I have no idea how much fire tenders are and I can spend time castigating government over the price but I am not qualified to do so. Suffice to say, as many are saying, on the internet, these are costing something like US $550,000. Now add accessories, customisation works, shipping, landing costs, costs on trucks from the border to here since you can’t just drive them and risk damaging them, then training of local staff, and then profit, and maybe after-service. Will the total reach USD1million? Kaya!!!
Me I don’t know teacher. Are we together class?
Oliver Shalala [Facebook]
The post Citizen’s View: Answer The $1 Million Question; The Case Of 42 Fire Trucks appeared first on Zambia Reports.