Harbin deal gets govt nod again

The cabinet purchase committee yesterday reapproved a power plant contract with controversial Chinese company Harbin, a month after suspending its approval of the deal.
The contract for setting up a coal-fired 250 megawatt power plant in Barapukuria Finance was reapproved at a meeting of the committee chaired by Finance Minister AMA Muhith.
Later, cabinet division additional secretary Nurul Karim told journalists that the purchase committee had approved the Harbin deal early last month but suspended it following allegations of foul play in the tender.
“We have scrutinised the tender process at the level of the Power Development Board and the Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU) but found nothing wrong in the selection,” he said, explaining yesterday's reapproval.
A Chinese co-bidder late last year lodged a complaint with the CPTU that after opening the tender proposals, the PDB illegally allowed Harbin to modify its financing offer to make it appear as the lowest bidder, which it was not. But the complainant, which was set to bag another power deal in another tender, withdrew the complaint in late December.
The Chinese company that built the Tongi 80 MW power plant in 2005 with hundreds of faults was blessed by Hawa Bhaban during the BNP rule and was blacklisted once.
During the tenure of caretaker government, the local agent of Harbin filed an extortion case against Giasuddin Mamun, friend of the then BNP Senior Secretary General Tariq Rahman (now senior vice chairman), among others, saying that they had taken Tk 5 crore to award the deal for Tongi power project.
Now the same company has the blessings of a powerful ruling Awami League lawyer-parliamentarian.
Under the lawmaker's influence, Harbin was picked as the selected bidder out of two participants although its offer was subject to the tender's rejection clause. Harbin's price offer was higher than that of the other Chinese bidder -- China National Machinery Import and Export Corporation (CMC) -- but Harbin was shown as the lowest bidder through tender manipulation,.
Harbin did not mention the prices of three items in its offer (an auxiliary transformer; cables and balance of plant). This means the company had not taken these items into consideration while making their financial offer. It did not also provide the PDB with the end user certificate to prove its experience in building at least 100 MW coal-fired power plant. Its financial offer was higher than that of the co-bidder.
In this context, ignoring tender rules, the PDB tender evaluation committee in October made way for Harbin to change its financial terms by asking it to clarify some financial points. Harbin changed its financial configuration and consequently it became the lowest bidder.
At yesterday's meeting, the purchase committee also approved a Tk 948 crore furnace oil-based public sector 100MW power project in Chapainawabganj.
Chinese Hubei Electric Power Survey and Design Institute was selected as contractor through a tender floated back in June last year in which five companies participated.
During the evaluation, three companies were disqualified. The remaining two were Chinese companies Dongfang Electric International Corporation and Hubei.
Sources said the PDB disqualified Dongfang on the pretext of amending its bid security although it was done around a month before the PDB opened the company's financial proposal. This way the PDB made Hubei the lone bidder.
Sources said that Dongfang's amendment to bid security was to give it higher standards and it had no impact on its financial proposal.
This prompted the company to lodge a complaint with the CPTU. But the CPTU ruled that the company had changed the bid security format. This allowed the PDB to go ahead with the lone bidder being represented by a ruling party lawmaker.