Relaxation in tendering norms for Kerala Solid Waste Management Project

The State government has further relaxed the norms regarding World Bank procurement regulations for execution of works under the Kerala Solid Waste Management Project (KSWMP) by urban local bodies. As per the existing rules, the concurrence of the government is needed for the approval of single bids in the first instance of tendering for a particular project.

However, the KSWMP Project Director had informed the government that many urban local bodies have been compelled to cancel and re-tender such bids considering the time lag involved in getting government approval for small value works in cases where there is a single bid at first instance of tendering. In this context, the Project Director had requested the government to reconsider this provision regarding government concurrence. The government has in an order last week said that only single tenders which are beyond the limits of acceptance as per existing norms (tender excess beyond 10%) need to be submitted for concurrence.

Last year, the government had relaxed existing norms and adopted World Bank’s procurement regulations for execution of works under the project, which is being funded by the World Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

With regard to performance guarantee, the existing norms had mandated the collection of 5% of the contract value as performance security deposit, out of which 50% of the guarantee is in the form of treasury fixed deposit and the remaining as bank guarantee. As per the World Bank regulations, this was changed into bank guarantee for the entire value of the performance security deposit. Additional performance guarantee is mandated by the government norms in cases where the bidders have quoted abnormally low bids. As per World Bank norms, this was done away with, except in case of unbalanced bids.