COMET Transport S.C. awarded contract for the supply of a total of 295 trucks worth 696 Million Birr to a Dubai based company called, Van Vliet XL Group, Fortune reported.
The supply is going to be made through an Ethiopian subsidiary company called Afritruck.
An international tender was floated by COMET Transport S.C., for the purchase of trucks for itself and three other state owned enterprises; Bekelcha Transport, Ethiopian Shipping & Logistics Services Enterprise (ESLSE) and Yelet Derash (Emergency) Transport.
Nevertheless, the tender saw some controversies raised by two other participants of the bid. Complaints were raised by Automotive Manufacturing Company of Ethiopia (AMCE) and Equatorial Business Group (EBG), both who submitted their offers along with Van Vliet.
The protest of AMCE and EBG was that there is a flaw in the technical evaluation. They claimed the tender originally was for 6 x 4 trailer trucks and 8 x 4 semitrailer trucs.
In relation to this, AMCE and EBG have submitted their complaints to the Federal Transport Authority. However, the supply from Van Vilet is going to take place this week by borrowing 70 percent or 487 Million Birr from Banks.
Other complains raised by AMCE were Afritrac, the local representative of Van Vliet is relatively new to the business as well as it has only a 2,500 square meter maintenance facility which AMCE claims to be very small. On the other hand, AMCE’s is 132,392 square meters.
In reply to this complain Belay Kidanu, Director General of COMET Transport, said “We need trucks not a garage. The winners are not even obliged to deliver spare parts and we may not buy their spare parts even if they do”.
Commenting on the other complains, Belay said evaluation for technical and financial proposals was done by a purchasing committee that includes two representatives of each enterprise purchasing the trucks. He added 70 percent was given to the technical parts and the remaining for financial part of the proposal.
Belay added companies were after the evaluation given five days to lodge official complain, yet no one came forward.
Source: Fortune
