All four companies/joint ventures that applied for installation of electronic monitoring system on the manufacturing premises of excisable commodities have not submitted the supportive documents to the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), essential under the qualification criteria.
Official sources told Business Recorder here on Monday that during the first stage of bidding process, the qualification requirements of firms are being evaluated. The supportive documents under qualification criteria have not been submitted by the firms. The FBR is repeatedly writing to all the four international firms to submit the requisite supportive documents.
It is worth mentioning that FBR is reviewing four technical bids received from companies/joint ventures to introduce electronic monitoring system for oversight on production of finished goods and supply of the relevant data of 100-150 cement, beverages, sugar, cigarettes and fertilizer manufacturers to the FBR.
The FBR had constituted an evaluation committee comprising four FBR Members to review the technical bids received from the concerned companies. The FBR has also constituted a technical sub-committee to assist on technical aspects of the bids. The FBR wanted to introduce a system at the manufacturing premises of five major excisable commodities to monitor their production and obtain production data of taxable goods on daily basis without any interruption. At the initial stage, the FBR will focus on counting of the finished products at the manufacturing premises and check the production data with the declared returns by the manufacturers. The cross verification of the data would be done by the FBR with the help of production data available with the tax department. The FBR needs uninterrupted data on 24x7 basis to properly monitor the manufacturing of excisable finished products.
Sources said that the FBR is strictly following Public Procurement Rules in this regard. The two stage bidding procedure has been followed for evaluation of bids. At present we are at the first stage of the process by evaluating the technical bids. The technical proposal shall be evaluated in accordance with the specified evaluation criteria and may be discussed with the bidders regarding any deficiency and unsatisfactory technical features.