Online bidding “disliked” in Vietnam because of its transparency
Online bidding “disliked” in Vietnam because of its transparency
E-bidding has been refused by the state owned enterprises (SOEs) because its… outstanding strengths.
While the government has been strongly determined to apply the e-bidding mechanism, hoping to help the state budget save billions of dollars a year, SOEs’ managers have been trying to delay the application.
Too many problems still exist…
According to Tran Quoc Viet from the Vietnam Post and Telecommunication Group (VNPT), one of the three SOEs chosen to implement the e-bidding mechanism in a pilot program, 31 subsidiaries of the group have applied e-bidding for their 187 package deals, from which 428 contractors have been chosen so far.Meanwhile, Trinh Thi Lan Anh from the Electricity of Vietnam (EVN) said e-bidding has not been the favorite choice of the group’s subsidiaries because of a lot of problems.
The only difference between the e-bidding and the traditional bidding, according to Anh, is that contractors can get bidding documents more easily. Contractors still have to print the documents, while there still must be the councils to assess the tenderers.
Anh suggested that the automatic assessment should be applied to simple package deals.
The senior executive of an SOE noted that e-bidding still has been implemented… manually. Since a lot of documents could not be uploaded on Internet, contractors had to send hard copies to the investors.
In principle, in e-bidding, all the procedures need to be implemented online. However, in fact, involved parties still keep print versions of the documents to show to inspectors.
Especially, the legitimacy of digital signatures and certificates has not been legalized, which makes investors and contractor hesitant to apply e-bidding.
A senior official of the Hanoi Planning and Investment Department has admitted that e-bidding has been applied for only three package deals over the last five years.
“The city’s authorities have released a lot of documents requesting to apply e-bidding, but the investors of the projects have reasoned the problems in legitimacy, labor force and technology to refuse e-bidding,” he said.
…but the biggest lies in leaders’ awareness
Le Van Tang, Head of the Bidding Management Agency, an arm of the Ministry of Planning and Investment, while admitting the existing problems mentioned by the SOEs’ managers, emphad that the biggest problem is that investors “dislike” online bidding.
“I believe that the majority of enterprises and agencies don’t want to apply e-bidding because the mechanism ensures the transparency and helps reduce wrongdoings,” he said.
With e-bidding, all the information can be exposed to the public, which puts all contractors on equal footing. Contractors have the right to question investors if they believe the investors make unfair decisions.
However, it is the transparency, the biggest advantage of e-bidding, which shrink back the investors. They want the bidding process to go in unclear rather than a transparent way.
According to the Bidding Management Agency, by the end of 2013, more than 1,000 electronic packages deals were successfully made in 2009-2013 through the national bidding network at muasamcong.mpi.gov.vn.
MPI believes that online bidding allows saving 10 percent of the procurement deals’ value. If noting that the total procurement value of state agencies is $20 billion a year, the total sum of money to be saved would be several billions of dollars.
vietnamnet
