Hasty BTCL deal raises questions

The haste of Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Ltd (BTCL) in awarding the Tk 140 crore project for installing modern internet backbone to Korean KT Corporation bypassing the BTCL board's observations has raised questions.The project titled "Internet Information Network Expansion", also known as Info-Bahan project, will be jointly financed by the governments of Bangladesh and South Korea.The new authority of BTCL hurriedly signed the deal although the previous board recommended re-examination of the bid documents following an allegation of the other bidder that KT Corporation submitted an invalid document to win the bid.Interestingly, new BTCL Managing Director SM Khabiruzzaman issued the letter of intent to KT Corporation on March 2--even before his own appointment was approved by the board of directors--whereas the deal itself was officially singed on March 19.The Info-Bahan project was verbally approved at the BTCL's ninth board meeting held on February 19. The board members decided to reach a solution at the next meeting.The next board meeting on March 11 approved Khabiruzzaman's appointment as the BTCL MD and decided to re-examine some documents of the project but the KT deal was not ratified as it was not on the meeting agenda. The matter was not raised even at the next two meetings.Sources said the meetings did not have any agenda for issuing a letter of intent to KT Corporation. The deal was signed completely bypassing the board's final approval.Later, at the April 2 board meeting the board ratified all activities of Khabiruzzaman from February 22 to March 10."Before placing the deal before the board finally, the agreement signing with KT Corporation is nothing but overconfidence showed by the BTCL managing director," said a board member. "We do not know why he was so confident that the board will ratify the deal."The BTCL floated tender for the Info-Bahan project on 24 September 2008. As the project was taken under a loan agreement between Bangladesh government and South Korean government, only Korean companies took part in the bidding.Korea Electric Power Data Network Consortium (KDN) and KT Corporation submitted tenders for the project.As per the bidding conditions, the bidder's benchmark testing certificate for all equipment offered for the project must be issued by telecom carriers or Telecommunications Technology Association in the bidder's country.If any bidder does not provide the required documents including that certificate, the BTCL evaluation committee shall declare the bidder non-responsive and shall not continue with further evaluation of its bid, according to the tender paper.KT's bid was accepted although it provided the benchmark testing certificate it obtained from China instead of its own country.The project's pre-bidding meeting declared KDN non-responsive for failing to provide the certificate.KT Corporation in its bidding paper proposed to supply project equipment from Chinese telecom vendor Huawei, which also raised questions among officials concerned.The issue of KT's submission of invalid benchmark testing certificate was discussed at several board meetings of the BTCL. The 10th board meeting decided to scrutinise the bidding documents before procuring equipment from KT Corporation and assigned two directors to re-examine the documents further.But each and every observation of the board members was overlooked by the new BTCL management.Talking to The Daily Star on Wednesday at his office, new BTCL MD Khabiruzzaman however claimed that the Info-Bahan project was signed after having the board's final nod. "Most of the deal's procedure was completed before my joining," he said.In reply to a question, he also said it does not matter if my works is ratified later at board meeting.Ashok Kumar Mondal, director procurement, claimed that the project handover to KT was transparent.There was a provision in the tender that if a bidder fails to obtain the benchmark testing certificate from its own country, it will not get points for that document and BTCL cut KT's points for this, Mondal said, adding that a company cannot be declared non-responsive based on this certification.However, ABM Al Faruk, local agent of KDN, said, "We have seen lots of discrimination regarding marking. BTCL cut our points by showing simple reasons."