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Chinese company to build Padma bridge

Cabinet nod for lone bidder today; bridge turns Tk 3,772cr costlier in 4 years

Rejaul Karim Byron
The Padma bridge project finally sees a breakthrough after a three-year delay over allegations of a corruption conspiracy, with the cabinet purchase committee set to award today the contract for the construction of the bridge to a Chinese company.
The government-formed committee to evaluate tenders has recommended that the contract be handed to the lone bidder, China Major Bridge Engineering Company (CMBEC), giving a clean chit to the bidding process for the country's largest-ever infrastructure project.
The CMBEC will get the $1.55 billion (Tk 12,133 crore) job against a revised estimated cost of $1.77 billion (Tk 13,886 crore). The Bridges Division revised the estimated cost upwards due to the three-year delay caused by the World Bank's cancellation of financing for the project.
This means the CMBEC will do the job for an amount 12.62 percent less
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than the revised estimated cost.
In 2009, the government had estimated the cost at $1.06 billion (Tk 8,361 crore).
The bridge project hit a snag as the WB in 2012 cancelled its $1.2 billion credit, saying it had proof of a corruption conspiracy involving Bangladeshi officials, executives of a Canadian firm and individuals.
The Bridges Division, which formed the evaluation committee headed by Prof Jamilur Reza Chowdhury, now seeks the cabinet committee's approval for the bid.
It has sent the cabinet committee a proposal along with the evaluation report prepared by the eight-member body.
According to the Bridges Division proposal, the government will pay the Chinese company 26 percent of the cost in local currency and the rest in foreign currency.
On April 25, only one Chinese firm submitted by the deadline a financial bid for the construction of the main bridge.
Two other companies - Samsung
C&T Corp and Daelim-L&T JV -appealed again for extending the deadline by another lOto 11 weeks.
Evaluating the financial proposal, the eight-member committee said, "Although only one bid was ultimately received, the other two bidders, who had submitted first stage bid and had been invited to submit second stage bids, did not announce their intention to withdraw from the bid process."
The fact that they both requested a significant extension of the bid submission date with less than three days to go before bids closed was indicative of their intention, and slightly unusual, but not definitive. It is therefore unlikely that CMBEC were aware that they would be the only bidder," it added.
Referring to the WB's guidelines on public procurement rules, the committee said, "All of these criteria were met in the bidding process for the main bridge and therefore, despite the fact that only one bid was received, we consider the bid competitive and in accordance with World Bank guidelines."
The WB guidelines say, "Lack of
competition shall not be determined solely on the basis of the number of bidders. Even when only one bid is submitted, the bidding process may be considered valid if the bid was satisfactorily advertised, the qualification criteria were not unduly restrictive, and prices are reasonable in comparison to market values.”
The committee also said the Chinese company offered a discount of around Tk 612 crore in their bid proposal which strongly indicates that they did not know they would be the only bidder.
In June last year, the government asked the four pre-qualified bidders to submit technical proposals by September 9.
On request from the bidders, the deadline for filing technical proposals was extended four times. The final date was January 9 thisyear.
The three companies submitted their technical proposals by the deadline.
In 2011, the WB raised allegations of corruption in the Padma bridge project and finally cancelled its financing for the project in 2012.