Tender Board determines criteria for exemption from temporary bid security guarantee

Muscat: The Tender Board has determined the criteria for exempting bidding companies from providing temporary bid security (bid guarantee) as a condition for taking part in the tender.

This exemption will reflect positively on the competitiveness of companies in government tenders and is part of the exerted efforts of the Tender Board to improve the business environment and to address the companies’ financial liquidity challenges.

The Royal Directives of His Majesty Sultan Haitham bin Tarik stipulated that companies should be exempted from providing the one per cent temporary bid security when submitting their bid for one year.

This exemption aims at facilitating bidding procedures for tenders, increasing the number of companies taking part in the government tenders, and increasing the capabilities of the small and medium enterprises to compete for government tenders as well as encouraging competition in the tendering process to obtain the best bids.

To ensure the seriousness and the capabilities in implementing the bids, the participating company in the tender must sign a document confirming its commitment to the submitted bid proposal for the determined period of the adopted bidding strategy.

In accordance with Article 28 of the Tenders Law, the bid-offer that is less than 20 percent of the other submitted bids and then the estimated cost of the bid, will be excluded as it proves that it does not meet the terms of the bid and is unable to implement it.

Companies that withdraw before the end of the specified validity period of the tender will be deprived of participating in government tenders for one year.

Government entities must notify the General Secretariat of the Tender Board within 10 working days about companies that withdraw from tenders during the validity period of their bids.

The temporary bid security must also be provided in two cases, which are: Tenders whose estimated cost exceeds OMR3 million, and whose annual economic return exceeding above 10 percent of the estimated cost of the tender. And the international tenders are submitted by international companies that do not have headquarters offices in the Sultanate of Oman, except the companies which are participating in tenders for the supply of medicines and medical supplies.

It is worth noting that the General Secretariat of the Tender Board works to manage and implement government procurement in accordance with an advanced model in organising and managing tenders and providing services with transparency and professionalism to achieve high levels of customer satisfaction while ensuring the proper and efficient use of public money in accordance with best practices and principles of transparency, equal opportunities, equality and freedom of competition.