Passport supplies

It´s getting interesting and complicated at the same time. As the April 1 deadline given by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to replace the current handwritten passports with machine-readable ones is drawing closer the government is receiving more and more offers to supply the passports at competitive prices. Each supplier is promising quicker delivery and a better price. The price, which was initially estimated to be around US$10 per piece when the government called for international bidding to supply the hi-tech travel documents, has now come down to as low as US$ 3.5 a piece, and it’s expected go down still further. Supply offers have come from India, France, Malaysia and Indonesia.



This should theoretically have made things easier for the government. But it hasn’t. Since these offers didn’t come through competitive bidding every prospective supplier is making a move, sometimes a hostile one, based on what the others are offering. For instance, when the Indian government offered to supply the passports at Indian rupees 200 a piece, it would have made for a good deal. But since then the others have come up with better offers. The Malaysian embassy jumped into the fray and said Malaysia was willing to supply passports at US$ 3.75 a piece and the French have offered them at US$ 3.65 each. The best offer, however, has come from Indonesia—to supply them at US$ 3.5.



This newspaper doesn’t have the necessary expertise to analyze each of these offers since price is just one dimension of passport supply. There are questions about the delivery time, quality of the passports and other technical details that will have to be taken into account to make an informed choice. But the government seems to be moving very slowly on this issue and its silence over each of the offers is baffling. The government hasn’t even started the process of constituting a chief secretary-level committee to make necessary recommendations, something that is mandatory under the Public Procurement Act.



We want to emphasize two things: Transparency and cost-effectiveness. Transparency is key in such a huge deal involving multimillion dollar transactions and multiple interest groups. Since the international bid to supply the passports was canceled under controversial circumstances the government must make extra effort so that another round of controversy does not mar the process. Equally important is to secure the best offer possible and pay as less an amount as possible since every rupee that goes into purchasing the passports will be taxpayer money.

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