SOEs accused of charging high fees
MBABANE – There are claims that some Stateowned enterprises (SOEs) charge high tender fees to discourage some bidders from tendering.
This comes after allegations and concerns from small micro and medium enterprises (SMMEs) who tender for the provision of goods and services to parastatals. The tenderers said the SOEs were charging them too much for tender documents. They claimed that these fees were increasing every year, despite that SOEs no longer print tender booklets; instead they were available on ESPPRA’s website.
They also accused SOEs of using the tender fees as money generating schemes, because some of the companies cancelled tenders but did not return their fees.
Procurement
They called for government’s intervention to this issue, because it was taking a lot from SMMEs.
Eswatini Public Procurement Regulatory Agency (ESPPRA) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Vusi Matsebula said there was currently no legal instrument to control or regulate the fees charged by procuring entities.
“The ESPPRA reviews the tenders to check if they are compliant with the requirements of the Act and the regulations, such as the minimum tendering periods, correct method of procurement, opening of tenders, evaluation criteria and provision of form of contracts in the tender documents to count but a few.
‘‘There is currently no legal instrument to control or regulate the fees charged by procuring entities,” Matsebula said when responding to the outcry by the local businesses.
This means SOEs tenderers will have to hang-in there for a while regarding paying high tenders fees as ESPPRA does not have a legal instrument to regulate the fees.
Specifications
Matsebula added that traditionally, procuring entities (PEs) charged tender fees to recoup the costs they would have incurred when preparing the tender, for instance, in the event they hired a specialist to prepare the tender and detail the specifications for the tender.
Matsebula said they also charged for the printing costs of the tender documents. He mentioned that they had asked about some fees as well, but the limitations of legislation limited them.
Matsebula said: “In some instances, PEs argued that they were charging these high fees sometimes to also discourage the bidders that would not be able to deliver on the assignment.
Thus it saves time for the PEs since they do not have to evaluate or look through a lot of would-be unsuccessful tenders.”
He said with the absence of the legislation, the agency only advised, then it would be up to the entity to reconsider the tender fee or continue charging their initial fee.
With that being the case, the CEO stated that ESPPRA had not received a formal complaint, but on its volition the agency had during the capacity building sessions highlighted this issue to the PEs.
“The public procurement space is currently experiencing a lot of reforms.
This is one of the conversations that are part of the reforms. We have also come up with measures that have greatly assisted entities to reduce tender documents printing and advertising costs. Case-inpoint; the tender advertising portal (on the ESPPRA website) where tenders from procuring entities are uploaded and advertised.
“This is to mean suppliers and bidders can download the tender documents in soft copy, without printing or if they decide to have hard copies they can be on their (suppliers and bidders) cost,” he said. The CEO said the agency advocates for the non-sale of tender documents where possible and if necessary, fees to be kept minimal to promote participation.
“Adversely though there is no legal provision that deems entities non-compliant should they not heed to this advice,” he said.
Agency
He went on to mention that the agency would soon be launching the Standard Tendering Documents (STD).
Matsebula said these documents had been prepared by the agency and there would be no need for the PEs to pay consultants to prepare most of the tender documents for them, thus relieving the SMMEs from the high fees.
The Federation of Eswatini Business Community (FESBC), Head of Business Transformation, Mavela Sigwane called for the formation of STD to be fast, because emaSwati were indeed discouraged from bidding for these tenders.
“We hope the intervention to launch the documents can be sooner,” he said.
He added that some of the interventions like the online tender documents did not reduce the fees and wondered if the STDs would really change the fees.