1 OF 8 SUPPLIERS OPTS OUT OF BMC'S VACCINE TENDER RACE

This leaves seven firms in the fray who have proposed to supply Russian vaccines Sputnik V and Sputnik Light

Three days after the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) announced that it received responses from eight distributors to its global Expression of Interest (EoI) for the procurement of 1 crore doses of COVID-19 vaccines, one of the eight bidders opted out of the tender process on Friday. According to civic officials, one of the bidders, a vaccine supplier from the Czech Republic, who offered to supply Pfizer and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine doses to BMC, has withdrawn its proposal.

This has left seven firms in the fray who have proposed to supply doses of the Russian vaccines - Sputnik V and Sputnik light.

BMC plans to procure 10 million vaccine doses from the international market to accelerate the vaccination drive in the city. On May 12, BMC floated a global EOI to procure 1 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses from the open market. The last date for participation was May 18. Subsequently, responses/bids from five potential suppliers were received by May 18, 2021. However, due to issues pertaining to incomplete documentation from the manufacturers/distributors, the deadline was extended by a week. On Tuesday, the last day for bids, the civic body received three more responses. The deadline has once again been extended to June 1.

Of the eight responses, the first three bidders were -two from Hyderabad and one from the United Kingdom. Of the five responses that the civic body received later, one was from Czech Republic, which had bid for the supply of Pfizer and AstraZeneca.

The civic body's announcement about one of the bidders offering Pfizer raised doubts among different circles across the globe. This was because the United States pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Moderna had refused to supply vaccines to the Delhi and Punjab state government, saying that they will only deal with the central government and not with individual states.

On the evening when BMC announced a bidder offering to supply Pfizer, Asian News International (ANI) reported a Pfizer spokesperson as having said, “Neither Pfizer nor any of its affiliates globally, including in India, have authorised anyone to import/market/distribute Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. We continue to have discussions with GoI towards making our vaccine available for use nationally.”

However, BMC had maintained it had received a bid from someone willing to supply doses of Pfizer.