Bid process for core projects fast-tracked

NEW DELHI: To speed up infrastructure creation, the finance ministry has streamlined the process of inviting and processing financial bids from private parties for highway projects.

The ministry has taken away the flexibility of individual ministries, departments and state agencies executing public-private-partnerships to decide their own timeframe for different stages in the process. It has stipulated that the last date of receiving any query on the RFP, the document inviting bids, will be 25 days from the date of the RFP.

The authority inviting bids has to respond swiftly and all queries have to answered within 35 days of calling the bids. The authority also should give at least 45 days to the developers to place their financial bids. The fee for obtaining the documents inviting financial bids is raised 10-fold to Rs 1,00,000, as per a copy of the revised RFP.

The ministry has also brought several changes to the new bid-inviting document to align it with the recently modified norms to shortlist developers for making financial bids. The ministry raised the limit for cross-holding among bidding companies from 1% of the paid-up capital to 5%. The cross-holding limit in the original criteria was kept at 1% fearing that it might lead to bid-rigging. The ministry has taken the view that up to 5% cross-holding may safely be allowed without fear of collusion among the bidders.

The new norms, finalised by the finance ministry in consultation with the Planning Commission, says the changes would lend more transparency and predictability to the entire bidding process, allowing decisions to be made objectively and expeditiously. The document also says the changes are the critical requirements that must be observed while conducting a ���credible selection process���.