Stop retendering as it leads to inefficiency, CAG tells finance ministry

New Delhi: The comptroller and auditor general has written to finance ministry expressing concern over the practice of cancellation and retendering in ongoing tendering processes, which, it said, has become a major bottleneck in govt’s ambition of becoming a $7 trillion economy by 2030.In its communication to the expenditure dept, CAG said the govt must stop the practice of “retendering as it frustrates the efforts of procurement officials and distorts the process by breeding inefficiency”.“Instances have come to notice regarding a number of tools employed by some procuring officials to award contracts to favoured bidders, including repeated retendering of a project to ensure that only such a bidder or a pool of such bidders remains in fray,” it said.CAG has recommended a unified central vendor registry across India’s public procurement ecosystem to enable a “credible integrated system of verifying vendor credentials” and remove duplication. Currently, govt contracts require separate vendor registration with each ministry and dept.“As the procurement regime evolves to support India’s $7 trillion economy ambition by 2030, addressing emerging challenges is critical to improving efficiency,” CAG said.On retendering, CAG observed that in many cases the price bids of shortlisted bidders in new process are higher than those discovered earlier, resulting in delays in project award and avoidable financial losses to the public exchequer.Its recommendations also include a standardised framework to rate vendors on parameters such as contract fulfilment and quality issues.