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China company lodges complaint against PDB

Accuses it of 'foul play' in bid evaluation of Chandpur plant

SHARIER KHAN
For the first time, a Chinese company has lodged a formal complaint against the Power Development Board (PDB) under the Public Procurement Regulation (PPR) 2003 for "illegal practices" in the bid evaluation of Chandpur 150 megawatt combined cycle power project.
The company-- CMEC-- filed the complaint with the Complaint Review Panel under the Central Procurement Technical Unit of the Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) on Thursday, sources said.
The IMED is likely to ask the power ministry within this week as per the PPR to halt the process of awarding the contract for Chandpur project to
Harbin till disposal of the complaint.
The CMEC had earlier complained to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and the PDB itself accusing it (PDB) of favouring a disqualified Chinese company, Harbin, in the Chandpur bid.
In the June 28 bid, Harbin filed a bid beating its nearest competitor CMEC by 11 million dollars and
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Indian competitor Bhel by 24 million dollars.
But Harbin did not submit any technical bid as required, making its offer invalid. Yet the PDB's Technical Evaluation Committee (Tec) accepted the offer. To cover up this major flaw, the project's director on July 9 sought Harbin's technical evaluation afterwards, although the bid was already closed. Again this was a violation of the PPR.
While the Tec accepted Harbin's offer, its sub-committee in a report admitted that acceptance of Harbin's bid was in violation of the rules.
The Tec itself admits that the seemingly low price offer of Harbin is flawed. In its report it said, "Harbin has quoted some major items of lesser quantity and did not quote some consumables… it is evident that the price of Harbin is less due to lesser quantity."
The CMEC had also warned the government of legal action for this, saying the PDB is violating the PPR.
But under the influence of the business lobby behind Harbin, the PDB and the PMO went ahead with the project triggering the CMEC to for-
mally lodge a complaint with the IMED as per the government's procurement rules.
To lodge this complaint, the CMEC paid a registration cost of Tk 5 lakh, sources mentioned.
"Already a good number of reputed firms have stopped participating in the country's power sector tenders since corruption and irregularities have gripped the sector and the government is failing to ensure transparency," a PDB source pointed out.
An industry insider said, "It will be interesting to see whether the IMED review panel can work independently -- free from the influence of money and power."
In the last four years, the BNP-led coalition government signed only two power project agreements - one for the Tongi 80 MW simple cycle plant and the other Fenchuganj 90 MW combined cycle plant. Both the contracts went to Harbin despite its lack of experience and other shortcomings.
The Tongi plant started test operation back in March and commercial operation last month, but it keeps on tripping repeatedly due to poor quality technical work and other reasons.