News
Tender for digital ID: Two Indian firms disqualified
View(s):By Sandun Jayawardana
The controversial tender to build the platform for Sri Lanka’s digital national identity card project will be refloated after the Cabinet Appointed Procurement Committee (CAPC) disqualified the two Indian companies that had submitted bids.
Technology State Minister Kanaka Herath confirmed yesterday that the CAPC had notified both bidders that they had been disqualified.
“We hope to refloat the tender at the earliest, given the urgency of the matter,” he told the Sunday Times. The Indo-Sri Lanka Joint Project Monitoring Committee (JPMC), which is overseeing the progress of the ongoing project, is expected to meet in the coming week to discuss the next steps following these latest developments. The JPMC is co-chaired by State Minister Herath and outgoing Indian High Commissioner Gopal Baglay.
Officially known as the Sri Lanka Unique Digital Identity (SL-UDI) Project, the scheme is being partly financed through a grant by the Indian Government following a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in March last year. The total cost of the project is in the region of Rs. 41.05 billion. In August, the Indian Government provided an advance payment of 450 million Indian rupees (Rs. 1.75 billion) to the
Sri Lankan Government for the project.
Only Indian companies are eligible to bid for the project in terms of the MoU.
The Indian companies, Madras Security Printers (MSP) and Protein Technologies, submitted tender bids before the August 2 deadline announced by the CAPC.
The tender process, however, has been mired in controversy from the beginning over allegations it had been manipulated to favour MSP.
The tender for the procurement of a “Master System Integrator (MSI) for Designing, Developing, Supplying, Delivering, Installing, Implementing, Supporting and Maintaining the Software, Hardware and Infrastructure for the Sri Lanka Unique Digital Identity (SL-UDI) Project of the Government of Sri Lanka” was first advertised on May 8 this year by the Information Communication Technology Agency (ICTA).
Problems arose from the outset owing to several abrupt changes to the deadline for submitting bids. Initially, the deadline for submission of bids was 3 p.m. on July 4. On June 30, the CAPC announced an extension of the deadline until 3p.m. on August 14. On July 5, however, the deadline was abruptly extended to 3 p.m. on July 18. On July 14, the CAPC again revised the deadline, this time extending it again to 3 p.m. on August 1. On July 31, the deadline for submission of bids was changed for the fifth and final time to 3 p.m. on August 2.
The abrupt changes to the deadline left prospective bidders confused and frustrated, a source with knowledge of the bidding process told the Sunday Times. The source also claimed that prospective bidders were not provided with enough clarification for the many Request for Proposals (RFP) clauses in the bid document. They were considered too vague. Requests to amend a number of tender conditions deemed too restrictive were rejected.
National People’s Power (NPP) Leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake raised the matter in Parliament last month, telling the House that while seven companies had obtained bid documents, only two had submitted bids by the August 2 deadline. The decision to shorten and extend the deadline has raised serious questions about whether it was an effort to allow only pre-selected bidders to submit bids. If the deadline had remained on August 14, perhaps more companies would have submitted bids, Mr. Dissanayake said.
Mr. Dissanayake alleged that tender conditions had been drafted with the aim of favouring MSP.
MSP has a problematic track record on a number of major projects around the world and has been accused of irregularities in several cases. In Sri Lanka, MSP has also been the subject of controversy regarding the supply of security stickers for liquor bottles. It won the contract to supply the supposedly “foolproof” security stickers in 2018.
In raids over the past several weeks, Excise Department officers have found nearly 44,000 liquor bottles containing fake security stickers. The scam is believed to have cost the state millions of rupees in unpaid taxes. Parliament’s Ways and Means Committee, which is investigating the scam, stated recently that it found the sticker had been widely forged and recommended that a fresh tender be called for a new security feature for liquor bottles.
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