Following the directives of the federal government, the Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) has decided to scrap urea import tender as presently there is no urgency. The second urea import tender was issued by the state-run grain trader in December on the directives of the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet to avoid shortage in Rabi season as domestic urea producers were unable to produce sufficient quantity of the commodity due to gas curtailment.
The state-run grain trader opened urea import tender on January 4, 2019 and received some 11 bids for urea supply. One bidder submitted a regret letter, while the remaining 10 international suppliers/bidders quoted prices ranging from $295.87 per metric ton to $309.70 per metric ton on Cost and Freight (C&F) basis.
According to bid evaluation report prepared by the TCP bid evaluation committee, out of 10 bids, some three bids, including first lowest bid were non-responsive as they were failed to fulfill the terms and conditions, sources said.
The bid evaluation committee declared first lowest bid of M/s KeyTrade non-responsive due to violation of clause 7 of the tender documents, as the validity of bank guarantee was not as per the requirement. The TCP also declared the bid of M/s MidGulf non-responsive due to non-provision of affidavit as per clause 8(b)(vi) of the urea tender.
In addition, bid of M/s Samsung C&T was also non-responsive due to non-provision of financial status report as per clause 8 (b) (vii) (ii) and NTN mismatches with authority letter.
Following the PPRA rules, the TCP displayed the bid evaluation report on its website for 10 days and accordingly, a list of the received bids was sent to federal government for consideration and subsequent views.
The bid award committee of the TCP met Tuesday and following the directives of the federal government decided to scrap the tender as presently the demand for the commodity is on decline in the domestic market and there is no urgency for import. A TCP official said that presently urea prices in the world market are unstable and witnessing a declining trend since the opening of the tender. Secondly, the import will take almost 30 to 35 days and may reach Pakistan by the end of Rabi season, therefore it was decided to scrap the tender. The validity of all received bids was some 13 days and today all the bids will also expire, he added.
The state-run grain trader had recently completed import of some 100,000 metric tons of urea to meet the domestic demand in Rabi season.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2019

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