Texpo 2016: TDAP defends itself after allegations float

Badar Expo complained body did not follow PPRA rules in awarding contract

KARACHI: The Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) has defended its bidding process for Texpo 2016, which is due to start on April 7, after it came under attack by one of the bidders who cited irregularities in its complaint to Transparency International-Pakistan.

Badar Expo Solutions Private Limited, one of the five companies that bid for the event management tender, accused TDAP of not following Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) rules after its bid was rejected.

In its letter, the company cited alleged irregularities following which Transparency International-Pakistan wrote to TDAP CEO S M Munir, asking him to look into and explain the bidding process.

TDAP, on its part, has said that the process was transparent and keeping in line with all procedural requirements.

“It is incorrect that Badar Expo had submitted the lowest bid for Texpo 2016 tender,” said a TDAP official. “We followed all necessary bidding procedures and only then awarded the tender to the lowest bidder. Since we followed all procedures, we know we can defend it at any forum.”

Following the complaint, TDAP officials constituted an internal ‘grievance committee’ whose members met on Tuesday to resolve the bidding issue between Ecommerce Gateway Pakistan - the company that eventually won the tender - and Badar Expo. The committee finally gave its verdict against Badar Expo, saying that according to its reassessment Ecommerce Gateway had the lowest bid of Rs13.08 million.

One of the issues with the TDAP bidding process has been its complicated nature, where one tender is divided in to various sections instead of one consolidated project. The bidding documents consisted of 49 different items. Badar Expo won the initial bidding on 46 items with the lowest bid of Rs8.1 million. However, after calculating the prices of the remaining three items, the cumulative total revealed that Badar Expo had given the highest bid of Rs43.5 million.

One of the three items, or bill of quantities (BoQ) item number four was carpet. The finalised quantity of carpet was 150,000 square feet, for which Badar Expo gave an unusually high rate of Rs175 per square foot - over 18 times higher than the Rs9.5 per square foot or 16 times to Rs10.5 per square foot from Ecommerce Gateway and Pegasus Consultancy, respectively.

When contacted, Badar Expo officials declined to comment on why some of their quotations were so high compared to others.

TDAP has been surrounded by controversies in recent years as many of its top officials faced probes on financial irregularities since PML-N came to power in 2013.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 2^nd,  2016.

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