The Public Procurement Commission and the Gjirokastra Water Supply Company are embroiled in a dispute over a tender worth 1.3 million euros. The reason for the clash is that each party wants to declare itself the winner of the tender.
The procurement procedure for the water supply of the villages of Picar and Kolonjë in the Municipality of Gjirokastra took place in November last year. 14 competitors competed in the tender, but the Gjirokastra Water Supply Company disqualified the 12 lowest bids and declared the winner the company Ed Konstruksion, which had the second highest bid out of the 14 participants with 1.2 million euros.
Bids in the 1.4 million euro tender
The announcement of the winner was appealed to the Public Procurement Commission by the company Liqeni VII, which was ranked 10th in terms of price, offering a value of 1.13 million euros. The Gjirokastra Water Supply Company had disqualified the company Liqeni on the grounds that it had made an error in its submitted bid, calculating the equipment in the estimate with VAT.
The KPP assessed that this was not illegal, on the contrary, the calculation without VAT would have been so. As a result, the KPP decided to order the Gjirokastra Water Supply Company to qualify the Liqeni VII company, thus automatically declaring it the winner.
But after the decision of the Public Procurement Committee, the Gjirokastra Water Supply Company re-evaluated all the bids that had been disqualified for the same reason, that they had calculated the equipment in the estimate with VAT.
In the tender, 9 offers were submitted with a lower price than that of Lake VII, some of which were disqualified for the same reason as Lake VII, namely that of VAT.
As a result of the re-evaluation, the companies Hastoçi and Zdrava also qualified. The latter, since it had a bid 100 thousand euros lower than Liqeni VII, was automatically declared the winner.
But after the re-evaluation of the Water Company, the KPP intervened again, suspending the tender and ordering the Water Company to disqualify Hastoçi and Zdrava and declare the winner the company that the KPP had decided on, namely the Liqeni VII company.
KPP accepts only the company Liqeni VII
Although according to the law, the KPP is the highest decision-making body for public contracts, the clash over the 1.4 million euro tender for the water supply of the villages of Picar and Kolonjë seems like a fight between two jackals over who will announce the winner of the huge contract.
The Gjirokastra Water Supply Company preferred to declare Ed Konstruksion, a pet company and a strong favorite for AKUK bidding, the winner, even though it had the second highest bid out of 14 competitors.
But the KPP apparently prefers to do the shopping itself and not AKUK. If the KPP's decision, which states that the calculation of the equipment in the estimate with VAT is legal, were to be applied to all bidders, then the contract should normally go to Hastoç. But the KPP says that the decision should be applied only to the company Liqeni VII. The work of the scoundrels who decide where the money should go.
Editorial
