VietNamNet Bridge – The “contractor-investor’s war,” where involved parties play dirty ruses leads to the lack of transparency in bidding and causes a big waste of resources. The Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) believes that once e-bidding mechanism is applied, the problem would be settled.

The “bogus investor”

A new model of inviting for bid, called the “he-cries-wine-and-sells-vinegar bidding,” has appeared, putting authentic tenderers at a disadvantage. A businessman related that in many cases, the projects’ investors, when posting the information on mass media to call for bid, provided the addresses which did not exist.

The investor of the project on building the technical infrastructure system for the new urban area development in Hoai Duc district in Hanoi, for example, showed the wrong address and contact numbers.

Tenderers were told to buy bidding documents at the head office of an architecture design consultancy and investment company, headquartered in Chuc Son town of Chuong My district in Hanoi. However, since the address and telephone number did not exist, tenderers had to spend time to go to every corner in Chuc Son town to look for the right addresses until the announced time for selling bidding documents finished.

The bogus address was really a trap for tenderers.

In another case, a contractor in Hanoi finally successfully bought the bidding documents for a project after he had to overcome a lot of difficulties put by the investor. However, he did not grab the chance to join the bid, simply because he was too late. He bought the bidding documents at the time when the bid was nearly to close, and he did not have enough time to prepare for the bid.

According to the contractor, this was the project on building the 4th-class rural road network in a commune in Dien Bien province.

Projects’ investors play a lot of trickeries to put big difficulties to block authentic contractors’ way and give the opportunities to the contractors they want.

A lot of investors put sky-high and unattainable requirements on contractors in order to keep contractors far away from the bidding.

The investor, who called for the bid on the procurement of 200 sickbeds for a hospital, set unreasonable financial requirements on tenderers. The candidates needed to have the average turnover in 2008, 2009 and 2010 at 50 billion dong and higher. Meanwhile, the value of the bid package was just 900 million dong.

Projects’ investors also taste bitterness

In other cases, a lot of investors also “reaped bitter fruits” when “cunning” tenderers played dirty with them. In general, the investors were young and inexperienced enough.

The investor of the project on expanding the clean water supply system in TN commune is a typical example. The investor posted the invitation for bid on mass media, clearly showing the deadline for the issuing of bidding documents. However, the investor only received two tender documents when the deadline came. Therefore, the investor decided to extend the deadline, while the notice about the extension was also posted on mass media.

Only one more set of tender documents was sent. Of the three tenders, only X Company could satisfy the requirements of the investors. One of the other two did not have the required financial capability, while problems found in the tending prices offered by the other tenderer.

The story here is that X company kept other contractors away, while hiring the other two to act as the “chessmen” to sacrifice to help X obtain the bid package.

Hai Dang