Consultation on standard bidding document and evaluation criteria set for next week -President Ali

His Excellency Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali has said that consultations will commence next week on the standard bidding document and the standard evaluation criteria. President Ali made the disclosure today during the joint press conference between Guyana and the European Union.

“It has been very distressing for the government that the evaluation criterion was restricted in such a way that it became a hindrance to businesses. We saw for example criteria that disqualify bidders because they did not show what qualification the mason had or carpenter had,” the President explained.

Vice President Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo recently disclosed that instances of corruption have been uncovered in the evaluation of bids for Government contracts. He made the disclosure during an interview with the ‘Guyanese Critic’.

“We have had a couple of cases where evaluators have contacted people to say we can adjust the evaluation report if we get a bribe. We have had a few instances like those, and we are going to take a strong position on those people,” the VP explained.

The VP also revealed that the APNU+AFC Government had changed the standard bidding documents for projects, allowing every Ministry to have its own bidding document.

That has placed enormous subjective powers into the hands of evaluators, the Vice President said. He related that there was an instance of bidders being disqualified for not producing the qualifications of a mason.

“Evaluators can subjectively alter a lot of the evaluation to steer contracts by disqualifying many others to steer contracts in a particular direction, and it is rotten to the core,” Dr. Jagdeo said.

However, the VP noted that the Government would not allow this to continue.