Vanadzor kindergarten food supply tenders held in violation of the law

Recently, citizen Karine Danielyan informed the Fact Investigation Platform that the food supply tenders for kindergartens in Vanadzor are held under non-competitive conditions, the companies wishing to participate face illegalities and, as a matter of fact, free competition in the procurement process has been disrupted.

The Fact Investigation Platform tried to reveal the issues the companies that wish to participate in the tender faced. The result of the investigation showed that the actions of the tender commission have really act as an obstacle to the free competition between the participants of the procurement tender.

For example, Vanadzor “Kindergarten No. 30” JSC announced a tender for procuring food for the kindergarten on December 1 last year. The deadline for applying was 7 days following the announcement. According to the relevant Government decision, participants’ applications shall be submitted by hand, in hard copies.

However, organizations wishing to participate did not have the opportunity to submit their applications within the specified 7-day period. The commission gave the opportunity to those who wished to participate in the procurement only on the last day, December 8.

The records on the registration page of the tender participants in the registry run by the secretary of the commission also show that all participants registered on December 8, one after the other, with a difference of minutes, and sometimes at the same minute.

Besides, parameters that are characteristic of the product of a specific manufacturer (brand, firm) were defined in the technical specifications of the invitation to tender. In particular, in the description of the sour cream, in addition to certain attrbutes (fat content, acidity, etc.), as well as the description of safety and quality standards, there was a requirement to supply only “Marianna” or “Araratyan” brand sour cream, which, in fact, restricted the potential participation of companies representing a range of other brands in the online auction.

The sour cream is just one example. Similar requirements are set in the technical specifications for vermicelli, pasta, tomato paste, cookies, milk, condensed milk, chicken meat, melted butter and other products.

In other words, the Commission did not comply with the requirements of Article 13, Clause 5 of the Law of the Republic of Armenia on Procurement, that is, the attributes of the object of procurement shall not contain a requirement or reference to any trade mark, brand name, patent, sketch or model, country of origin or a specific source or manufacturer, unless it is impossible to characterize the object of procurement without them. When using references, the description of attributes shall contain the words “or equivalent”. However, in the case of the above-mentioned products, it is obvious that the description of the object of procurement without using the name of the company was more than possible.

In addition, the commission rejected the price offer of one of the applicants, giving the following reasoning: “in the price offer, the VAT amount is not written in Arabic numerals in the column “VAT”.

This could have been a justified decision, if the above-mentioned government decision had not stipulated that at the bid opening session, the chairperson of the commission shall announce the price offers of the participants who submitted bids, expressed in a single number, taking as a basis what is written in letters.

There is also the Official Clarification No. P-2 dated October 9, 2017, according to which the failure to write the VAT amount in Arabic numerals in the “VAT” column shall not be a basis for rejecting the application.

Moreover, according to the same clarification, even if the “Amount” and “VAT” columns of the price proposal are filled only with numbers, and the “Total Price” column is filled with both letters and numbers, the bid of the participant shall not be subject to rejection.

Thus, we can state that in the process of procurement of food supplies for kindergartens in Vanadzor, a number of provisions of the RA Law on Procurement, as well as the Government decision, have been violated, which creates unequal competitive conditions in relation to other participants of the tender. By the way, the same tender commission organized the food procurement process of Vanadzor Kindergarten No. 35, where similar violations were also recorded.

Vahe Ghukasyan