VP Jagdeo blames GDF for issues with award of $2.1B Kares Engineering Inc. contract

Jun 28, 2024 News

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Kaieteur News – Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo on Thursday laid blame at the feet of the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) for the issues surrounding the award of the $2.1B contract awarded to Kares Engineering Inc. for the construction of a wharf.

At his weekly press conference held on Thursday, Jagdeo said that the GDF inserted a criterion in its Request for Proposals for the said project that led to a compliant being raised about the award of the contract.

Kaieteur News reported in its Thursday paper that the Public Procurement Commission (PPC) flagged the award of the contract after a contractor, Correia and Correia Limited (one of the bidders for the contract) lodged a complaint with them.

The complaint included allegations that Kares Engineering’s bid was “non-responsive based on the Financial Assessment within the Evaluation Criteria” and therefore should not have been awarded the contract.

Kaieteur News understands that Correia & Correia sent a letter to the PPC stating that in the bid document that there was a criterion which stated that any company that bid below the 80% benchmark set in the criteria will not get the contract.

Speaking on the matter, Jagdeo said that when he reached out to the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB) about the contract, he was informed that the procuring agency had departed from the Standard Bidding Document and did not seek approval to modify its tendering criteria.

“First of all, there is a Standard Bidding Document that should be used by every single government entity that was established by us in the past. There are 19 criteria that you can use. We had discontinued when this was done years ago ‘a percentage below the engineers estimate as disqualifying any bidder’. So there is the Standard Bidding Document of the government with a list of 19 criteria,” the VP stated.

He explained that, “If you look at the Procurement Act, the Procurement Act says that anytime a ministry or a department or anyone tries to change the Standard Bidding Document, they have to seek the approval of the National Tender Board.”

The Vice President said that the rule is in place to avoid chaos in the system. “This criterion is not part of the Standard Bid Document, yet it found its way into the GDF Request for Proposals. So if they wanted that in, they had to seek the approval of the tender board,” Jagdeo explained.

He noted that the NPTAB is within its full right to say that the procuring entity departed from the Standard Bid Document.

The VP said that Section 23 (3) of the Procurement Act of Guyana says that each such tender Board shall prepare, using such standardized forms and criteria as have been prepared by the National Board, solicitation documents for tenders subject to its jurisdiction; and may, with the approval of the National Board, make such minor alterations or modifications to the forms and criteria as are deemed necessary on a case by case basis.

“The GDF didn’t do this. So the tender board is right in this case to say you inserted a criterion that is not part of the standard criterion and therefore should not be used in the evaluation,” Jagdeo told reporters.

Further, Jagdeo revealed that the contract was awarded to the lowest bidder in a public tender, and what has happened is a departure from what is the standardized form of bidding.

The VP said that when this happens, it isn’t picked up by the Cabinet or the tender board because it is presented as the lowest bidder won the contract.

“I am hoping that the people who are looking into this would pay attention to all these matters, departure from standard bidding document and we now have to take a strong disciplinary approach to these agencies that do procurement out in the public domain that depart from the standardized process,” the VP mentioned.

He added that his government is committed to being transparent, and in the case of procurement processes, they are working hard to keep contracts out of “corrupt practices”.

With that being said, the VP told reporters that, “We’ve already been reading the riot act to a many of the people in the regions… the procurement officers, we’ve made it clear that if you violate this, particularly deliberately, well I don’t know in this case if it was deliberate or just an oversight…But if you do this, you would face the consequences.”

Meanwhile, in defending its award, the NPTAB in a release on Thursday stated that the project was opened in November 2023, and subsequently bids were evaluated by an independent committee to which the evaluators recommended the lowest responsive bidder and an award was made in December 2023.

Kares Engineering Inc. was among eight bidders that bid to construct a reinforced concrete wharf for the GDF Coast Guard at Ruimveldt.

“In March 2024, Correia & Correia Ltd. submitted a request for review citing ‘Any bidder whose bid is less that 80 percent of the engineers estimate will be non-responsive’. It must be noted that this Engineers Estimate was never published or given to the bidders prior to the opening of bids,” NPTAB explained.

The Tender Board explained further that “the criteria cited was discontinued years ago and is not included in the numbered criteria in the approved Standard Bidding Document.”

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• Both President Irfaan Ali and Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, Correia, Guyana Defence Force (GDF), Kares Engineering Inc., Vice President

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