How Pinda’s office ditched $84m offer

                                                                                                                                                                         Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda   

By Katare Mbashiru,The Citizen Reporter

IN SUMMARY

• The Canadian and French governments deal entailed a soft loan; a firm from the funding country would be offered the job while the Treasury would save $5 million

Dar es Salaam. As the Treasury struggles to pay $89 million (Sh149 billion) for the Biometric Voter Registration kits (BVRs), emerging details show that Prime Minister’s Office rejected an offer from French and Canada to supply 12,233 kits through a “government-to-government” arrangement.

 Under this deal, the Canadian and French governments would have provided funding for the project through a soft loan, but attached with some conditions: awarding the contract to a firm from either of the two countries.

Investigations by The Citizen show that the deal would have cost $84 million, as opposed to the $89 million the NEC is set to spend on the BVRs project.

But, for reasons not stated clearly by the PMO, the offer, which among other things involved financing the multimillion-dollar project funded by the Canadian and French governments.

 The Citizen further established that one of the conditions for the deal was that the supply of the BVRs be handled by either French or Canadian based company—a similar condition always issued by foreign financiers, including China.

According to documents seen by The Citizen, the Canadian and France governments, through their ambassadors to Tanzania, wrote on May 19, offering a financing solution to the BVRs project, whose procurement was earlier marred by irregularities.

The letter from Canada and France was followed by another dated May 22, from the Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC), in which the company expressed its intention to offer the possibility for Tanzania to procure a  supply, installation, testing and commissioning of high quality BVR system.

The CCC informed the PMO that the 12,233 BVRs were to be delivered within 60 days from the effective date of the Contract between CCC and NEC.

It further stated that the central and the regional systems would have been delivered within 90 days from the effective date of the contract between CCC and NEC. Four weeks prior to delivery, according to the letter, NEC kit operators would undergo training.

But, despite the offer, which would have entailed 80 per cent of the cost, whereby the remaining 20 per cent would be settled by the government of Tanzania, no one gave the nod to the proposal.

“The French embassy and the Canadian High Commission in Dar note that further to the nullification of last year’s tender award for the project by the Public Procurement Appeals Authority (PPAA), the subsequent use of emergency procurement through single source method led to a significant increase of the selected company’s quotation from $84 million in 2013 to $117 million in 2014,’’ reads a letter in part.

The letter, signed by the French ambassador Mr Marcel Escure, adds that his office and that of the High Commission of Canada were ready to jointly express their full support to the establishment of ethical, timely, efficient and trustworthy government-to-government contract between the government of Canada’s Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC) and the United Republic of Tanzania’s NEC for the purpose of procuring BVRs.

Read part of the letter from Canada and France governments: “For the project, CCC would work with Morpho Canada, which is part of Safran Morpho, an international company, 30 per cent owned by the French government, with 8,100 employees in over 40 countries…Morpho is a leading provider of BVR technology, whose technical skills, qualifications and experience has been recognised around the world.”

The letter further read: “For all the above reasons, the French Embassy and High Commission of Canada are jointly offering their full support to the proposal submitted by CCC and Morpho, and believe this project will represent an excellent value-for-money solution for the United Republic of Tanzania and an opportunity to intensify and strengthen further partnership cooperation between our countries.”

According to reports made available to The Citizen, the NEC tender board awarded a South African company; LithoTech exports the deal to supply BVRs at a contract price of $117.18 million (Sh196.5 billion).

Earlier, the tender was awarded to a consortium comprising M/s  SCI Tanzania, Invu IT Solutions and Jazz Matrix Corporation on August 26, 2013, at a contract price of $78.9 million according to documents seen by this newspaper.

However, PPAA nullified the tender in November 2013 after it was established that the process was marred by serious irregularities.

But in a dramatic turn of events following the PPAA decision, NEC raised the cost from $78.9 million to $117.18 million on February 5—

a difference of $39 million (Sh65 billion)— according to various tender details obtained by The Citizen.

Following the nullification of the earlier tender by PPAA, NEC decided to go for single source procurement whereby the commission picked LithoTech Exports, a firm it had earlier disqualified.

According to a letter from the French and Canadian diplomatic representations, the CCC guaranteed that the project to supply BVRs would be completed on time and for 20 per cent less than the selected company’s price with a reputation of integrity.

“It must also be noted that on top of providing the highest quality solution, CCC can facilitate very advantageous financing for the project on a commercial basis,’’ reads a letter in part.

The two governments added that they would offer full support to the proposal submitted by CCC and that they believed the project would represent an excellent value-for-money solution for Tanzania and an opportunity to intensify and strengthen further partnership and corporation between the three countries.

The Citizen’s efforts to get comments from the PMO on why the offer was rejected proved futile because no one was willing to respond to various queries sent to the office yesterday.