The cabinet committee on government purchase has rejected a proposal for Road Transport and Highways Division's road development work because of single submission of tender documents.
The Roads and Highways Department had floated a tender for road development in Shariatpur district, where one bidder submitted documents and proposed Tk 1.05 billion.
"We did not approve the proposal as there was only one submission. We have asked for re-tender," finance minister AHM Mustafa Kamal told reporters after the meeting.
The minister ruled out the possibility of carrying out an investigation to find out the reasons for the submission of a single tender in the era of e-government procurement (e-GP) portal for bid submission,
"There is no need for investigation, because we published advertisement in newspapers and other media inline with the laws concerned. But it did not receive adequate offers. May be there are reasons," he said.
"Since it received the single offer, we thought that it needed to get competitive price. And for that we asked for re-tender. Our committee thought this was not a competitive price," said the minister.
Replying to a query, the minister said a road sector master plan will be prepared to identify how many kilometres of roads are there in the country and how many need to be constructed in the near and long terms.
"We have asked the cabinet to form a committee inline with the ideas floated by the Prime Minister on Tuesday," he said.
The committee approved a proposal for the appointment of a consultancy firm for a project namely "Dhaka city neighbourhood upgrading project" at a cost of Tk 439.57 million. It also approved import of 30,000 tonnes of phosphoric acid at Tk 879.74 million for the DAP Fertiliser Company Ltd.
The meeting further approved importing of 25,000 tonnes of bagged granular urea fertiliser from Qatar. The Bangladesh Chemical Industries Corporation will import the fertiliser which will cost the exchequer Tk 612.17 million. Also, the committee approved a proposal of a Road Transport and Highways Department for the construction of a road in Kushtia city at a cost of Tk 1.41 billion.
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