Proposal on PSI audit firm goes to advisory body tomorrow

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S M Jahangir
The proposal on appointment of a pre-shipment inspection (PSI) audit agency will soon be placed before a government's decision-making body for approval, amid controversies over the qualification and experience of the selected company, sources said.
The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has already accepted the offer of the single bidder -- the National Marine Consultants Inc (NMCI) -- to be appointed as PSI audit agency after its evaluation committee found both the technical and financial offers of the lone bidder 'responsive', they mentioned.
According to sources, the proposal for appointing the US-based NMCI as the PSI audit agency is expected to be placed before tomorrow's (Wednesday) meeting of the advisory committee on public purchase for obtaining its approval.
Although the evaluation committee (PEC) of the NBR earlier shortlisted two out of three international companies, the NMCI alone submitted its proposal for the job, said an official source.
But a controversy, according to sources, has arisen over the qualification and experience of the selected company in respect of carrying out such a specialised job.
Citing the company's previous track record, they mentioned that the NMCI was found earlier to have poor qualification in respect of its length of experience in PSI auditing by an NBR technical committee.
Moreover, in 2004 the company could not meet the required criteria, as was sought by the revenue authority for the appointment of PSI agencies in Bangladesh, another source said.
Although the NMCI filed a writ petition against its disqualification, a High Court Division of the Supreme Court rejected it, said a source referring to the Court judgement.
The government has initiated the move to appoint an internationally-reputed audit agency to detect irregularities of PSI companies to check its revenue leakage, caused by alleged regularities of the PSI agencies through false declaration and under-invoicing of imported goods, the sources said.
Official sources said, the main job of the proposed PSI audit agency will be to conduct post clearance audit and verify a maximum 20 per cent of inspection reports submitted by the PSI firms per month.
Besides, the audit agency will investigate the country of origin of the imported goods and if necessary ascertain the authenticity of the PSI reports.