In a clear violation of tender allotment rules, the Sindh government has awarded tenders to its favourite private firms for the construction of Hyderabad and Mirpurkhas roads, it was learnt on Thursday. Sources in Planning and Development Deptt told Business Recorder that Sindh Finance department, which was responsible to award tenders to private firms, is not following the laid procedure in this regard.
They said the department has opened financial bids without completing technical evaluation of the companies and added that concern authority intend to grant tenders only to private firms on Build Operate Transfer (BOT) basis and has completely ignored public sector in this regard. They said the financial proposals of the tender awarded firms are based on taking 70percent loan at 5 and 10percent interest, which seems to be unusual when interest rate is 18percent.
Furthermore, they said the department neither asked to provide bank guarantees to bidders in Request for Proposal (RfP) nor checked before granting the tender, which raised questions regarding the completion of the project. "If the company's financial proposal was based on 70percent loan, the concern authority should ask to provide bank guarantees for the purpose", they maintained.
Though the proposals filed by the companies are not lucrative for the department, the government has decided to grant tenders to them. They said, "if the project was initiated by the Works and Services department, the cost of the project would have declined as compared to the price quoted by the private firms."
Comments
Comments are closed.