THE Ministry of Health has responded to a letter from Fedders-Lloyd Coproration Limited concerning the design, building, and equipping of a specialty surgical hospital at Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown.
Following is the text of the letter from the ministry:
The Ministry of Health has diligently pursued the process of tendering and awarding the contract to Design, Build and Equip the Specialty Hospital for Guyana with due diligence and full transparency, adhering throughout the process to good, sound and proper policies and procedures. It is obvious to the ministry that in such an open and competitive process that attracted five bids from reputable Indian firms, only one firm will be successful.
In such a competitive environment it is natural that the non-winning bidder/s may wish to seek clarification/s pertaining to their bids. Naturally our National Procurement Procedures allow for such an eventuality and the Ministry of Health is willing and ready at all times to offer guidance and clarifications to such requests. However, this process requires that the matters of concern/s be addressed officially to the relevant and appropriate authorities. The ministry recognizes your letter under earlier reference as such an endeavour and effort on the part of Fedders Lloyd Corporation. It is with great regret that Fedders-Lloyd Corporation has only now sought to utilize this “official mechanism” in preference to their several press announcements and press interviews that were obviously designed to castigate the integrity of our professional evaluators and in the end, politicize a most judicious and transparent process.
In the spirit of this review mechanism which your Corporation has officially requested, the Ministry of Health hereby responds to the 6 points you have raised in numerical sequence as follows:-
1. We acknowledge that the letter from our High Commission in India dated April 13th 2012, announced to all prospective bidders the official “ pre-bid meeting and site visit” to be held on Monday 23rd April 2012, the “bid opening” date on 15th May 2012 and our intention of no further extension to the bid opening date. However, by our letter to all bidders dated 4th May 2012, we officially announced to all bidders “additional information to Bidders” following the pre-bid meeting of 23rd April 2012. In that letter our Project Manager wrote as follows “Further, two of the contractors during the recent pre-bid meeting and site visit requested an extension of the closing date for submission by at least one more month. The closing date for the submission was 15th May 2012. The client has considered this request and has decided to grant a further extension for the submission of bids to Tuesday 26th June 2012.” As is usual in such circumstance, and in order to allow for the most competitive process by facilitating the largest number of interested bidders to participate in the bidding process, the Ministry of Health took the decision it did at the pre-bid meeting. This does not in any way or circumstance violate any stipulation of international competitive bidding. On the contrary this is a standard procedure and is intended mainly to facilitate the widest participation in the bidding process.
2. Addendum No 6 dated 20th June 2012, which you referred to, constituted mainly clarifications of questions raised at the pre-bid meeting and other clarifications raised by bidders who were not present at the pre-bid meeting. As is the standard international practice these clarifications must be circulated, in writing, to all bidders. The issue raised that only 6 days rather than 14 days separated the official date of notification and the opening of bids could have been grounds for Fedders- Lloyd or any other bidder to request a further deferral of the opening date of the bid by the appropriate number of days. No Bidder (including Fedders -Lloyd Corporation) made such a request having regard to the already generous consideration of the client for earlier extensions. The Ministry of Health is satisfied that this matter does not constitute a material breach of process for Fedders-Lloyd to be aggrieved. If indeed this was such a contentious matter Fedders-Lloyd could have requested a deferral of the bid opening date.
3. The question of the Bid Security and the originating source has been a matter of numerous press commentaries by Fedders-Lloyd Corporation and now finally a matter of concern in your official correspondence to the ministry. The ministry wishes to make pellucid its position on this matter. The Pre-Bid meeting and decisions taken thereat are binding on all bidders and override all other previous instructions to bidders. In the particular circumstance, the pre-bid decision clarified the general conditions in the instructions to bidders Clause 13.2. The clarification and instructions emanating from that meeting- at which Fedders-Lloyd was present at very senior representation- and which record was communicated to and received by Fedders-Lloyd, in writing, clearly stipulated that the bid security must be from an Indian Bank. Fedders-Lloyd Corporation submitted its bid security from the Bank of Nova Scotia in Guyana. There is no evidence that the bid security was supplied by the Axis Bank of India with correspondence Bank relations in Guyana. This is in breach of the instructions to bidders and on technical grounds Fedders-Lloyd should have been disqualified on this ground alone. Nevertheless, the evaluation committee did not disqualify Fedders-Lloyd on this ground. On the other hand, the winning bidder supplied its bid security from an Indian Bank with correspondence banking relations with a local Bank. The ministry trust that this puts to rest the concerns of Fedders-Lloyd Corporation and that in the same manner that it outrageously made false, grossly inaccurate and derogatory public pronouncements, it will have the humility to be a gracious non-winner in this particular bid and inform its publicity campaigners and spokespersons of the pertinent facts.
4. The NPTAB acknowledged and announced the official bid price of US$22xxxxxxx as per the Contractor’s Bid. The NPTAB also acknowledged and announced the 23% discount offered on a supplemental attachment within the bid document, after, this was brought to the attention of the NPTAB at the time of opening. Several matters are pertinent here:
*  The official price of a bid is what is contained in the Contractor’s Bid which is an obligatory, non contestable issue.
*  No supplemental document can compromise that bid price irrespective of wherever else such adjustment in the price is made in the body of the bid.
*  If Fedders-Lloyd is offering a price discount then that discount MUST be clearly made on the Contractor’s Bid.
*  The fact of the matter, however, is that Fedders-Lloyd’s bid was not deemed non-responsive on the grounds of the discount being offered and or the manner in which it was offered.
*  With the discounted price of 23% of the bid price Fedders-Lloyd correctly assumed that it offered the “lowest priced bid”. What is most pertinent to point out here is that it is not necessarily the “lowest priced bid” that is the successful bidder. The NPTAB rules prescribe that the winning bidder will be the “Lowest evaluated Bid”.
5. The Ministry of Health is not responsible for the lack of knowledge and or understanding of Fedders Lloyd to the evaluation criteria. The evaluation criteria utilized for the assessment of the bid-as is the standard operating procedure for all tenders in Guyana- is administrative compliance, followed by technical compliance, followed by price. Clearly neither technical nor financial compliance is of any material value if the tenderer fails administrative compliance.
6. The association of Fedders- Lloyd with other companies is purely a matter for Fedders-Lloyd Corporation and is not a matter for the attention of this bid. The bid was made in the name of Fedders-Lloyd Corporation Limited and not as Fedder-Lloyd in consortium with NOUS Hospital. If Fedders-Lloyd intended to bid as a consortium then the legal arrangements of the consortium would have had to be made clear in the bid proposal. In such a formulation, the bid security would have had to be in the name of the consortium and not Fedders-Lloyd alone. Clearly
Fedders-Lloyd is unclear of what it wants to be and is guilty of trying to modify the process to fit its nebulous state.
The other matters raised in your letter pertains to personal aspects of the corporate nature of Fedders-Lloyd Corporation and are all immaterial to the consideration of the bid for the “design, build and equip” of the Specialty hospital. That Fedders-Lloyd work in many areas and in several countries and is engaged in an assortment of activities is not a unique nor propriety feature of the Fedders-Lloyd Corporation. While it is information that is useful to know such information are not factored into the rigorous and detailed criteria used to assess the “lowest evaluated bidder” for the project.
The Ministry of Health wishes to thank the Fedders-Lloyd Corporation for participating in the bid for the “design, build and equip” of the Specialty Hospital in Guyana. We trust that your concerns have been allayed and that your corporation has accepted that we have endeavoured to openly and transparently assess the best offer made to the country.

Best Regards
Permanent Secretary
Ministry of Health.