Digital driving licence to be costlier by 50%
The cost of digital smart card driving licence is likely to go up by about 50 percent as a tender proposal of the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) has received approval of the Cabinet Purchase Committee today.
The BRTA selected the previous firm’s proposal for providing 1.5 million cards over the next five years at the increased rate.
According to official sources, the company, which is now engaged in providing supply of digital smart card driving licence, has been selected for the supply of the 1.5 million cards through a fresh tender.
The sources said Tiger IT Bangladesh Ltd (TITB) is now engaged in the job of supplying 1.15 million cards until the expiry of the existing contract on October 3 this year. Until April 30, the TITB has supplied 1,130,474 digital smart card driving licences to BRTA.
As the current contract of the TITB is going to expire in October this year, the BRTA invited fresh tender last year. A total of three local and foreign companies submitted their bids of which two came out to be technically and financially responsive.
The TITB was among the two responsive bidders while another is Chennai-based Madras Security Printers. But the exiting TITB came out to be the lowest bidder with offering Tk 74.9850 crore against the bid of Madras Security’s Tk 77.3375 crore.
Finally, the BRTA tender evaluation committee recommended for TITB’s offer which the BRTA put forward for consideration of the Cabinet Purchase Committee’s approval. The committee approved the proposal at its meeting.
After the approval by the Cabinet body, the cost of each of the digital smart card driving licence will go up by 49.43 percent to Tk 499.90 from existing Tk 328.50, reveals a document of the Road Transport and Highway Division.
The BRTA justifies the increase in the cost saying that the new card material will be polycarbonate against the existing PVC material which will have a longer life than the existing one.
The new card will also have dual interface which is costlier than the existing one, mentioned the document.