Involvement of Indian firms has made the selection of contractors for repair and maintenance of RHD roads in the current dry season difficult, sources said.
They said the absence of a clear guidance in the procurement rules on the eligibility of foreign firms to form joint ventures with local ones to participate in bidding for small-scale physical works has made the situation rather complicated.
Officials at the Roads and Highways Department (RHD) said that its regular maintenance works have already been affected due to this year's heavy rains and prolonged flood. It is set to be affected further because of the latest complexity.
In almost all the cases of RHD procurement ranging from Tk 10 million to Tk 100 million, they said, the small and medium firms have developed a propensity to form joint ventures (JVs) with relatively large companies having higher annual turnover.
The reason behind doing so, sources said, is to facilitate the smaller firms to get better score in the past performance matrix and help bag the contracts.
But the RHD has found that the JVs are formed only to bag contracts and none of the big partners was anyway involved in the field work.
But what has given rise to problem is the involvement of Indian firms in JVs for local level small-scale road repair projects.
An official involved in procurement said participation of Indian firms in JVs has created problem as RHD faces difficulties in assessing performance of the bidder concerned since annual report of the Indian firm does not comply with the CPTU (central procurement technical unit) guidelines.
As a result, the review panel of the CPTU has held up at least four evaluation reports of RHD under Khulna Zone and one under Dhaka Zone as some other bidder have lodged complaints.
RHD officials said many zonal offices have already adopted a strategy to refrain from completing evaluation of the bids due to the complication.
The CPTU introduced the provision of submitting average annual company turnover and payment certificates of year preceding the bidding time in cases of all small procurements. This is aimed at evaluating the past performance of the participating bidders.
This rule is applied when more than one company become lowest bidders in any of this kind small work. The CPTU provision also scrapped earlier requirement of arranging lottery to select one among many lowest bidders.
However, this rule is equally applicable to other government agencies, including the Local Government Engineering Department and Bangladesh Water Development Board.
RHD officials said the procurement unit had several meetings with the CPTU to resolve the problem, but it is yet to get any solution.
According to them, the CPTU is now working on preparing the guidelines for all these agencies with a target to ensure fair participation of genuine contractors in all the procurement works.
A CPTU source said clear guidance would soon be available on participation of foreign firms in this kind of JVs.
